National Newspaper Websites Recover From December Slump

Britain’s National Newspaper websites have seen a sharp rise in usage in January, according to the latest data released by ABCe. The figures not only see the nationals regain users after the traditional December slump but actually put most ahead of where they were in November, in terms of both unique users* and page impressions.

Guardian Unlimited once again remains the most visited website with an increase of over three million users over the January period, resulting in an all time high of over 19.7 million unique users. Page impressions are also up over 40 million to more than 181.6 million.

In fact four out of the five nationals audited by ABCe have had huge increases at the beginning of the year.

The Daily Mail‘s site remains in second place with an additional four million people logging on to the site, totalling over 17.9 million. This is a significant increase from six months ago, with over eight million more people logging on since August. As is the trend this month, page impressions also rose impressively to over 142 million.

Times Online also had a good month with its unique users jumping by over four million people to more than 15 million, although its page impressions remained the lowest out of the audited group at 106 million.

The Sun‘s online presence has continued to rise steadily over the past six months, peaking with over 13 million unique users in January. Sun Online’s impressive ability to retain user’s attention has overshadowed it former heights with an astounding 250 million page impressions over the month.

Falling into the bottom of the group is Telegraph.co.uk. Whilst recovering from the competitor-wide Christmas loss of users, the Telegraph‘s website had failed to regain the pulling power it had in November in terms of unique users, reaching over 12.3 million throughout the month.

*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