ABCe: January sees more record traffic
After a slow end to the year which saw all National Newspaper websites bar the Sun Online lose users, there has been a huge increase in users over the month of January. According to data released by ABCe, 2009 brought record numbers to the seven national newspaper websites it audits.
Guardian.co.uk saw yet another record month with nearly 30 million unique users accessing the site. This is a massive increase of seven million users since December, the biggest ABCe jump the Guardian’s website has seen (23.4% MOM).
Telegraph.co.uk also had a fantastic month, bouncing back from the traditionally slow December, with a rise of nearly five million people viewing the website in the first month of 2008. Over the past twelve months Telegraph.co.uk has seen it popularity rise by 109.8% and 23.1% MOM.
Times Online also saw an increase in January, up 19.8% MOM, bringing the total number of unique users to 22.8 million. This was enough to see News International site climb back to the third most popular of the audited sites.
Which meant, despite gaining 3.2 million more unique users over the beginning of 2009, Mail Online fell back to fourth place with 22.8 million users, 20,000 short of the Time’s website. Mail Online has seen its usage grow by 27.8% YOY.
Sun Online remained the fifth most popular website, despite some fantastic growth over the past few months. Over January, 21.9 million people clicked their way onto the website, bringing a YOY increase of 64.5%. As per usual, the News International site had no competition when it came to the amount of page impressions produced over January. Sun Online brought in 346 million impressions, putting it 94 million ahead of it closest competitor Guardian.co.uk, which itself had its highest ever month.
Independent.co.uk remained in sixth place, with a rise 1.5 million over the month. Although lagging behind the other sites 10.2 million users in January brings its YOY increase to 108.2%.
Mirror Digital Group gained 1.3 million since the 31st of December, its highest number since it began reporting unique users in March 2008.
*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.