More than three million individual readers have accessed the World Socialist Web Site since the beginning of 2020

By David North and Andre Damon

27 April 2020

The readership of the World Socialist Web Site has grown considerably within the United States and internationally since the beginning of 2020.

Between January 1 and April 26, 2020, the WSWS has been accessed by 3.2 million unique visitors (i.e., individual readers). The total number of visits to the site is 5.6 million. The total number of pages viewed by WSWS readers is 8.7 million.

In the month of March, the WSWS was accessed by 1.6 million unique visitors. The total number of visits by WSWS readers reached 2.1 million. The total number of pages viewed by readers was 3.1 million.

These figures are based on the World Socialist Web Site’s industry-standard internal analytics system, which excludes automated traffic and only counts visits by individuals.

Monthly page views to the WSWS since January 2019

The most significant aspect of the WSWS’ readership is its international scope. Published in 15 languages, the World Socialist Web Site has a significant audience in dozens of countries.

Between January 1 and April 26, the website received 545,869 visits from the United Kingdom, 221,717 from France, 51,411 from Brazil, 29,189 from Turkey, and 73,911 from India. Over this same period, the number of visits in the 20 countries where the site was most frequently accessed is as follows:

Visits by country this year

In January, the total number of visits by readers in the United States was 514,277. The US-based visits to the WSWS in March reached 853,469.

The monthly visits from readers in Germany were 117,465 in January and 369,855 in March.

The monthly visits from readers in Brazil were 18,224 in January and 19,897 in March.

The monthly visits from readers in United Kingdom were 100,417 in January and 179,341 in March.

The monthly visits from readers in France were 46,145 in January and 78,362 in March.

The monthly visits from readers in India were 15,370 in January and 22,400 in March.

The monthly visits from readers in Turkey were 7,118 in January and 9,884 in March.

The increase in readers, total visits and the number of pages that are being accessed reflects the political radicalization of the working class.

The increase in readership has been all the more significant as it has been achieved in the face of the persistent efforts of Google, Facebook and other social media platforms, such as Reddit, to censor and block access to the WSWS.

The censorship of the WSWS by Google is particularly intense, and most obvious, in its responses to searches that employ terms such as “socialism,” “Marxism” and “Trotskyism.” Google generally directs such search requests either to websites that are hostile to socialism or to pseudo-left sites whose readership is a fraction of that of the WSWS.

Despite this censorship, the growth in the readership of the WSWS indicates a change in the relationship of political forces between the revolutionary socialist movement represented by the World Socialist Web Site (the political organ of the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International) and bourgeois and middle-class left-liberal political tendencies.

The web traffic ranking service Alexa ranks the global and national standing of all web sites.

Global Alexa traffic rankings on April 25 (a lower number means a higher ranking)

The global rank of the World Socialist Web Site as recorded by Alexa on April 25 is 14,948. The global rank of Jacobin magazine (jacobinmag.com), which is the principal political organ affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, is 24,287, that is, more than 9,000 places below the WSWS. Measuring only readership within the United States, the rank of the WSWS is 4,490. The US ranking of Jacobin stands at 6,943, approximately 2,500 places behind the WSWS.

The WSWS outranks Jacobin despite the latter’s frequent promotion by the New York Times and other news outlets associated with the Democratic Party. Except for reports on the recent controversy surrounding the New York Times'1619 Project, the existence of the World Socialist Web Site is rarely acknowledged in the capitalist press.

The readership of the WSWS is growing across a broad range of topics, from its daily political analysis to its arts coverage and historical polemics, including its replies to the New York Times' 1619 Project.

The most consistently popular articles have been those that relate to the class struggle and social conditions, with such articles often attracting a readership in the tens and even hundreds of thousands. The main growth in visits to the WSWS has been from working class readers accessing the World Socialist Web Site on cell phones.

The World Socialist Web Site is the most widely followed internet-based socialist publication in the world. The publications of the Pabloite and related pseudo-left and opportunist organizations attract a readership that is an infinitesimal fraction of that of the WSWS.

The web publication socialistalternative.org has a global ranking of 549,977. Its ranking within the United States is 197,920. The web journal Against the Current, posted online by Solidarity-us.org, has a global rank of 658,222 and a US ranking of 196,278.

The World Socialist Web Site was launched in February 1998. Over the past 22 years, it has waged an uncompromising struggle for the building of a world revolutionary party of the working class based on the Marxist-Trotskyist program of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

This fight for Marxist principles has been denounced and derided by the representatives of middle-class pseudo-leftism as “sectarian,” which is the epithet they use to discredit the Trotskyist movement’s fight to establish the political independence of the working class from all political parties and tendencies of the ruling class and its political agencies.

But what the pseudo-left denounces as “sectarianism” is intersecting with a growing political radicalization of the working class and student youth.

This process is reflected in the growing membership of the Socialist Equality Party (US) and the ICFI, which has made possible a broadening of the WSWS’ coverage of world events and an increase in the number of articles posted on the website.

The development of the WSWS over the last 22 years is an historical achievement. But with the rapid growth of the international readership of the World Socialist Web Site comes new organizational and technical as well as political challenges. The daily publication of the WSWS depends upon the support of its readership.

In the present crisis, the World Socialist Web Site is an indispensable weapon in the defense of the working class and the global struggle for socialism. Therefore, we call on our readers to make the largest possible donation to support the WSWS.

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