Declining audience figures for news websites: AI, the discontinuation of X, turbo SEO – there’s no shortage of explanations
The websites of the 40 major French news organisations saw a 22.9 per cent drop in visits between September 2025 and September 2026, according to figures published by the ACPM. Over the same period, app usage fell by just 9.4 per cent. A gap is therefore widening between websites, which remain highly exposed to Google’s algorithms, and apps, which are holding up better as they are less dependent on SEO.… Vulnerability The total number of visits to websites audited by the ACPM fell from 2.14 billion to 1.70 billion – a drop of 440 million in one year, representing a decline of 20.8 per cent. This statistic reveals much more than a simple decline in audience figures: it highlights the fragility of a model that remains heavily reliant on organic…