ABCe March 2009: Sun Online’s dominance is short-lived
Telegraph.co.uk has become the most popular national newspaper site, according to new data released by ABCe.
March saw the website’s total increase by 1.5 million unique user browsers, sending it ahead of its closest competitor. This is only the second time that The Telegraph’s online presence has come out on top. In April of last year it reported a figure of 18.6 million user browsers, scraping into first place. At the time Guardian.co.uk was only 100 thousand user browsers behind.
This difference this time around was more noticeable, with a gap of 1.5 million unique user browsers. It seemed that nothing could stop Guardian.co.uk’s dominance in the online world recently, but February saw the website losing millions of readers, resulting in a slip to third most popular of the audited sites. It was up by nearly a million since last month and has managed to get its way out of third position, reporting a still very healthy 26.2 million unique user browsers.
Sun Online’s month has been certainly a little more dramatic, shedding an amazing six millions visitors to the site over the thirty-one days of March. It was thought that its detailed coverage of the build up to Jade Goody’s death helped drive them to the top spot over February. Despite this loss Sun Online is still holding a very good position, with a YOY increase of 54%. As per usual Sun Online’s page impressions were leaps and bounds ahead of the others – the News International site was 20 thousand impressions shy of breaking its own record of an extremely impressive 346 million.
Mail Online continues to grow momentum, reporting a rise of nearly two million in its audience and jumping one place to fourth in the process. The Associated Newspapers’ site has been steadily gaining popularity over the last year. While its figures might not be as dramatic as its rivals, Mail Online has slowly and quietly garnered six million new unique user browsers over the past twelve months, the same figure that Sun Online lost in one.
Times Online lost fewer than 400 thousand users, but this was enough to send it down a place with a total of 21.6 million people visiting the site over March. The website’s traffic has been in a holding pattern of the 21-22 million users range for the last six months. Although it’s growth in popularity seems to have slowed down a bit it is reporting a YOY increase of 34%.
The sense of inertia continues to grow at the lower end of the list with the Independent and Mirror Group websites reporting a slight growth in user brosers but remaining in the same place. It has been 12 months since Mirror Digital Group began publishing their ABCe figures and in that time their audience has grown by 62%. In that same time Independent.co.uk has nearly doubled its audience with a March 09 figure of 10 million unique user browsers.
*ABCe defines Unique User Browser 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.