Jewish News websites and apps have tremendous influence in our world. They shape the discussion, priorities and agendas of our community.
They also get massive of traffic. In fact, they are the most popular Jewish destinations on the digital map.
Five years ago, I published a ground-breaking analysis of the top Jewish news sites in the world, and that post still gets lots of readers even today.
But things have changed a lot since 2012, so it’s time for an updated list and analysis.
The Big 5 of Jewish News
According to SimilarWeb, the most read Jewish News site in the world today is…
The Jerusalem Post
With 80+ years of brand authority, the Jpost is hard to dislodge from the top stop, but the Times of Israel, launched in 2012, is harder on their heals than ever.
Left-leaning Haaretz is not far behind. Ynet news and right-leaning IsraelNationalNews round off the top five but are not anywhere near the top 3.
Jpost got approximately 7.307 million visits in the most recent quarter, while TOI got 6.553 M. and Haaretz got 5.73 M.
All these sites are based in Israel, but since we’re only looking at English language news, that obviously means major traffic from outside Israel. Interestingly, while Jpost leads in the US and Canada, the Times of Israel is the most popular with visitors from Israel and the UK.
The King of Facebook
The battle for Jews news supremacy is largely being waged on social media so it’s interesting to note that Times of Israel and Israel National News are winning on Facebook.
Some people are surprised when seeing the top 5, because they see some of these sites being shared on social media way more than others. Someone told me they have never even heard of Ynet news and didn’t understand how it could be the 4th most popular Jewish news site.
However, we have to remember that social media feeds tend to be filled with links shared by your friends. That is people like you, with similar lifestyles and reading habits. Such a deluge of material comes through your feed, creating a false impression that you’re seeing everything. But in reality, you’re seeing a small portion of what’s out there, carefully curated by Facebook’s algorithm to keep you hooked and happy.
There are many Jews in the world who think and behave very differently than you and never frequent the sites you consider your bread and butter. However, Facebook does not show them and their opinions to you. For all you know, the most popular and important sites today don’t even exist.
Here’s a weird fact that expresses this reality: the JPost’s single largest source of referrals by a mile, is the Drudge Report. That is a website that I have never visited before and hopefully never will again.
And You Need to Know All This Because…?
This list is designed to help marketers, business owners and PR pros targeting the Jewish world to understand where their target eyeballs are looking these days. It’s also fun for anyone curious to know who are the current winners and losers in the battle for Jewish news dominance.
As a web business consultant specializing in the Jewish market, I’m frequently asked what websites are winning in various markets. If you’d like me to help you figure out how to reach your target market on the Jewish web, you’re invited to contact me personally.
This post will be followed up with some other posts in a series called: “The Battle for Jewish Eyeballs.” I’m going to take a comprehensive look at the global landscape of Jewish news sites, including newcomers, charedi sites, regional news sites, influential niche news sites, and upcoming trends in digital Jewish news publishing.
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Note: the stats reported here come from SimilarWeb, which is a leading website analytics tool, but not completely accurate.
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