Re-branded Guardian Site Continues Dominance
All of the UK’s national newspaper websites have seen a slight drop in users over February, according to figures released by the ABCe.
After a major decrease in December, users all over the UK and the globe were logging back on in January, where some sites were recording their highest amount of traffic ever. While the change in numbers hasn’t been quite as dramatic as recent months there was a universal fall across all competitors.
The newly re-branded Guardian.co.uk continues to reign supreme with 19.5 million unique users* over the month, with only a drop of around 200,000 since January.
The Daily Mail‘s site has lost nearly one million users since January but managed to pull in enough surfers to be the nation’s second favourite online national. Despite the amount of unique users it’s drawing in, people are only browsing for a short time as its page impressions for February came in at 131 million, bringing it in at the mid range of the five websites audited.
Although this sounds like bad news for the Associated Newspapers’ website, Daily Mail.co.uk has seen a huge jump in traffic in the past six months. In the third quarter of last year the website was averaging 11.5 millions users a month.
Times Online, which was the third most popular website, has also been gaining users despite a slight fall of 500,000 in February. Despite its slightly disappointing performance it has been growing steadily in users since June of last year. 14.5 million people were browsing the News International owned site last month.
Sun Online and Telegraph.co.uk did not perform as well as their rivals with 12.5 and 12.2 million users respectively. The Sun‘s site continued its trend of producing high numbers with regards to page impressions, with 227 million pages viewed. Compared to the Guardian‘s 171 pages, it is clear that where the Sun lacks in overall appeal it continues to capture its audience’s attention.
*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