ABCe: Three National Newspaper Sites Pass 20m Unique Users

Three National Newspaper websites have passed the 20 million unique user mark, according to the latest data released by ABCe. September proved to be another fruitful month for the nationals’ online presence with five of the seven sites audited showing an increase in traffic.

Guardian.co.uk continues to come out ahead of its rivals, with yet another record breaking figure. In September the site had 24 million unique users, the highest figure yet recorded for the national newspapers. This is nearly a 5% increase of August’s then record figure of 23 million. Guardian.co.uk was the first of the National ABCe audited websites to break the 20 million mark in June 2008 (see Guardian.co.uk Back on Top As It Hits 20m Unique Users). It wasn’t all great news, however, as it did report a drop of around three million page impressions.

It was another great month for Telegraph.co.uk. Along with retaining its place as second most popular website of the group, it added another million unique users, bringing its traffic to 22.9 million. This means that The Telegraph’s website has increased its user base by an impressive 155% YOY.

Times Online also reported an increase in users with 20.3 million people logging on over the month. This is a month on month increase of 3.21%. The news international website has also had a successful past twelve months with a 62% YOY increase in users.

Mail Online continued to gain new readers, but at a slightly slower rate. There were 17 million people logging on to the website over September, a YOY increase of 53%.

Sun Online actually shed users since August with a MOM loss of 1.6%, but still performed well. 15.7 million unique users were staying on the News Group’s website longer than any other of the sites. The Sun’s website reported 286 million page impressions, down from last month’s Olympic fever, but extremely impressive none the less.

Independent.co.uk had a great September with a huge jump of 20% in users MOM. The total unique users for the month were nearly eight million. This mightn’t look too impressive, but in the last twelve months the Independent has increased the number of people viewing its site by 96.83%.

Mirror Digital Network remained bottom of the board and actually lost users over September. A 5.65% MOM loss meant the unique users were dwindling at 5.2 million people.

*ABCe defines Unique User as “The total number of unique combinations of a valid identifier, Sites may use (i)IP+UserAgent, (ii) Cookie and/or (iii) Registration ID.” Note that where USERS are allocated IP addresses dynamically (for example by dial-up Internet Service Providers), this definition may overstate or understate the real number of individual USERS concerned.

ABC Electronic: 01442 870 800 www.abce.org.uk