ABCe February 2009: Sun Online takes the top spot
Sun Online has taken over from Guardian.co.uk as the most popular online destination for national news. Out of the national newspaper websites audited by ABCe, February saw The Guardian’s online offering dropping to third place.
After a fantastic start to the year, which saw a huge increase in traffic, February shows mixed results. In just one month Sun Online has seen its unique users jump by nearly 5.5 million. A total of 27 million people going online to view the News International site was enough to push it to the top of the list, with a YOY increase of 118%. Usually coming out way ahead of its competitors in terms of page impressions, this is only the second time Sun Online has attracted over 20 million people. Its page impressions were actually down 2 million from last month, but still ahead of closest rival Guardian.co.uk by 116 million.
Slowly growing in popularity over the past year is Telegraph.co.uk, which remains in second place. Its popularity only grew by 200 thousand people over the 28 days of February, but this was enough for it to hold onto its rank. ABCe reports that 26 million unique users were on the site, an impressive YOY increase of 113%.
After breaking traffic records month after month, Guardian.co.uk falls to the third most popular site, shedding nearly 5 million users over the month of February, leaving it with 25 million unique users. After displaying unprecedented popularity over the past few years this is the first time The Guardian’s website has taken such a knock. Last month it was thought that the website would become the first to break the 30 million unique user mark, instead there’s a surprisingly small YOY increase of 30%.
Times Online and Mail Online both slipped one place over the month, with unique users of 21.9 and 21.8 million respectively. Both also lost users, nearly 1 million each, over the month but continue to grow in popularity. Times Online has seen a YOY increase of 51.9%, while Mail Online fell behind with a YOY increase of 28.2%.
Independent.co.uk remained in sixth place despite losing nearly 1 million visitors. Independent has been growing steadily over the past year and reached its peak in January with 10 million users. With 9.3 million reported over February, there has been a huge increase of 103% since the same time last year.
Mirror Digital Group grew by just 300 thousand users, keeping it in last place of the ABCe Nationals. Since Mirror.co.uk began reporting figures in March 2008 it has increased its total by 2.5 unique users.
*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.