Drudge Misleads About His Popularity?

Know what that graph is? Matt Drudge's actual traffic graph from the internet's top ranking website, Alexa.com. So how come Drudge is crowing about his site traffic increasing? Information Liberation explains:

At the front right of the DrudgeReport.com it reads:

FLASH: DRUDGE REPORT'S TOP MONTH IN ITS 12 YEAR HISTORY: MARCH 2007! MAIN PAGE LOADED 425,371,511 TIMES... TOPS MARCH 2006'S 287,443,312 ... MANY THANKS FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT... THE LOVERS AND THE HATERS... AND THE ONES THAT STILL FIND THE INTERNET TOPS FOR NEWS AND INFORMATION!

To the internet novice, this would seem to be a good thing and a sign his traffic is increasing. In reality, it is just a ruse to give the impression his site is becoming more popular. If you read what he says carefully you will notice he says "main page LOADED 425,371,511 times". This is misleading because in order to artificially increase his page loads Drudge uses a reload script which reloads the page every minute or so. Hence, if someone just left their computer on DrudgeReport.com for an hour that would equate to 60 page loads.

...Obviously Drudge still gets a massive amount of traffic, but this is clearly an attempt to mislead his readers into believing his site (and the propaganda which goes with it) is becoming more popular, when in reality, like all the other Neo-Con propaganda organs, Limbaugh, etc., it is losing all its readership and is falling dramatically in popularity.

Matt Drudge even extends his truthiness to his own site stats. Figures.

Update I'd just like to say that I am in total awe of Jon Swift. His powers of satire do justice to his namesake. Go read, honest. This should be in the blogging textbook under "snark".

Update 2 Several prominent rightwing blogs, including Powerline and RedState, are having another try at the Wade smear based upon a Sunday, April 1 story from Agence France-Presse reporter Jennie Matthew as evidence that a reporter in the back of the press conference had "giggled" while Toasty McCain spoke. They jump to the conclusion that if there was a giggler, then it must have been Wade and Drudge is thus vindicated. Wrong. Michael Roston at Raw Story writes:

She told RAW STORY in an e-mail that Michael Ware was not the culprit.

"As far as I'm aware there was no disruption of the press conference at all," wrote Matthew from Baghdad. "The reporter who giggled at the back was not Michael Ware, whom I don't remember giggling or making any kind of disturbance. I think I remember him wanting to ask a question, but the congressmen ended the news conference."

I think it is about time Drudge divulged the name of his original source, because if it was a McCain staffer...

Update 3 Both Nolocontendere at Pig Lipstick and my blog-partner Libby over at her own site The Impolitic note that it isn't just Drudge who is losing traffic - all the rightwing hate merchants are down. According to Libby, in the last 3 monhs O'Reilly's Alexa stats have dropped 39%, Limbaugh by 40%, Ann Coulter by 27% and Malkin is down 33%.