ABC Jan 2012: Almost all newspaper groups see traffic rise

The UK’s national newspaper websites saw usage figures increase during January after December’s slump, with almost all audited sites recording a rise, with the exception of The Independent.

guardian.co.uk enjoyed the biggest percentage increase, up 22.3% on December, though Mirror Group Digital was not far behind with a 21.5% rise MoM. MailOnline also posted a 19.6% MoM rise in daily average unique browsers and remains the busiest site with a total of 5.8 million.

The popular news site, which has a heavy focus on celebrity gossip, is up by a significant 82% in the last year. The Guardian and the Telegraph sites have also seen an impressive rise since April 2007 (see graph below).

In January, the MailOnline became the world’s largest English-language newspaper site with a total global reach of 45.3 million people, according to comScore figures.

The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday site has overtaken The New York Times, which had a total reach of 44.8 million in December 2011.