Readers appear to be shifting away from the traditionally most popular providers of online news, according to data from Ipsos.
In June 2025, the 10 most popular sites collectively lost a total of 8 million readers, although the data is not de-duplicated, meaning some individuals may have abandoned more than one site.
The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) were the worst affected, though no news site was immune from the decline. The ABC managed to retain its ranking as the most-read Australian news site with 12 million readers, despite losing 1.9 million between May and June.
The left-leaning Guardian experienced the single largest month-on-month fall of any of the major news sites, with its online readership declining from 9.4 to 7.4 million, shedding 21 percent of its audience.
However, readers who visited The Guardian’s site increased the time they spent there, from 19 to 21 minutes per page, a 10.5 percent increase, making it one of only two sites to make gains in that important metric.
News.com.au was the other, making a 4 percent gain.
The Sydney Morning Herald lost 1.2 million, or 16 percent, of its readers, dropping by over 1.2 million from 7.76 million to 6.53 million. Meanwhile, 7news.com.au, nine.com.au, and Yahoo Australia lost more than half a million readers each.
While there was an almost across-the-board increase in views in May during the federal election—only news.com.au didn’t benefit—that appears to have been an anomaly.
And for most outlets, April had seen a decline, with eight of the ten leading sites having lost audience, with nine.com.au having shed over a million.
The steady fall over the past year could be due, at least in part, to Google’s adoption of artificial intelligence to provide summaries at the top of search results, meaning users don’t have to click through to the news sites that provided the information, thus depriving the publication of a visitor.
