Since 2004, more than 2,000 newspapers have closed in the United States. But there’s a network of local websites in Albany, Edmonton and elsewhere that are doing huge pageviews and revenue. Their secret?
Fake just about everything: buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs…
Fake just about everything: buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs…
Here’s the Albany Daily News. It’s never been updated since launch, has broken drop down menus, and a bunch of stale rewrites on the homepage. Behind that it’s filled with old celebrity content. It got almost 10 million page views in August, almost 100% from mobile. 
This is City of Edmonton News. Also never gets updated, is filled with old and irrelevant content, and the links to its social accounts are blank. It gets more traffic than the Edmonton Sun or Edmonton Journal. Yet Over 60% of its audience comes from the US?
Researchers @SocialPuncher found these and other sites masquerading as local news operations. Their analysis concluded that the sites are being showered with fake traffic. The “local” aspect is just to fool ad networks into letting them into the system so they can make money.
@SocialPuncher These sites monetize with Google and AppNexus. Google told me the sites aren’t violating any policies, and said they seem to buying some of their traffic. But that doesn’t explain *all* the traffic. As of now, these sites are still making money, while real local news suffers.
