Inclusion focus. The ranking includes platforms whose main function is publishing news and media content (digital publishers, general-interest outlets, media portals). Resources that are narrowly specialized and lack a clear news or media component are excluded. Key factors are the availability of a news section and the regularity of updates.

Composite scoring. Each site is evaluated through a composite of multiple independent, publicly verifiable datasets that reflect traffic and visibility. This approach ensures that the ranking is both robust and resistant to the influence of short-term fluctuations.

• Cisco Umbrella Top 1M — provides a daily view of global DNS requests, capturing not only browser visits but also other types of internet queries.
• Tranco Top 1M — combines data from several providers (including CrUX, Cloudflare Radar, Farsight, Majestic, and Umbrella) and averages them over 30 days to reduce volatility.
• Majestic Million — ranks domains based on the number of distinct referring /24 IP subnets, serving as a proxy for the diversity of inbound links.
• Similarweb — delivers traffic estimates through a blended model that integrates multiple measurement methods.

Handling of missing values. If a platform is absent from one or more sources, the missing value is replaced with the mean of the available data for that platform and adjusted slightly downward to avoid overestimation.

Index scale. Final scores are normalized to the Top1000 Index scale of 0–999, where 999 represents the highest possible value and 0 the lowest. Platforms are ordered in descending order of their index score.