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Online Journalism News

ABCe figures: Guardian breaks 20m barrier, Mail Online falls to fourth

Posted: 24/07/08 By: Laura Oliver
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Screenshot of Guardian.co.uk life&style homepage

Guardian.co.uk has become the first UK national newspaper website to break 20 million unique users a month.

The site recorded 20,499,858 unique users last month – an increase of 2,176,943 on the previous month, according to the latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe).

The figures see the site return to the number one spot in terms of traffic, after it fell into third place behind the Daily Mail and Telegraph sites in May's report.

The Guardian's success was closely followed by the Telegraph, which passed 19 million users for the first time over the same period.

The Telegraph recorded a smaller rise in unique users of 1,214,678 (6.6 per cent) since May, bringing its total for June up to 19,712,622.

Last month's figures for Telegraph.co.uk suggest an increase of 179.5 per cent year-on-year in unique users to the site, compared with a 41.24 per cent year-on-year rise for the Guardian.

The Guardian recorded a small increase in the number of page impressions with the figure growing from 178,889,898 in May to 183,178,155 last month.

A more significant rise was recorded by Telegraph.co.uk with 15,070,784 (151,857,375 in total) more page views than in the last audit in May.

The ABCe figures place TimesOnline as the third most popular site of the six audited with 16,369,630 unique users last month – an increase of 3.1 per cent from 15,877,693 in May.

Its place in the rankings was helped by the Daily Mail, which recorded a drop in both unique users and page impressions in June.

Unique users to the site fell by 2,697,322 (14.4 per cent) from May's chart-topping figure of 18,712,533 putting the paper just behind TimesOnline with 16,015,211 unique users. Page impressions decreased by 13.48 per cent month-on-month to 119,483,455.

Mirror Group Digital posted a month-on-month increase in unique users to its online portfolio of websites of 12.3 per cent with a figure of 5,426,320 in June.

Of this total, 56 per cent came from within the UK, while 44 per cent were overseas users.

Within the UK the group's audience grew by 16 per cent month-on-month.

Internally measured data for the month suggests a growth in unique users of more than 90 per cent year-on-year, a statement from Trinity Mirror said. ABCe audited figures for this period are not available.

Of the other individual newspaper websites included in the report The Sun broke the 15 million mark for the first time recording 15,510,242 unique users and 291,102,281 page impressions.

A gain of 10 per cent for the Independent saw its unique user figures rise by 682,136 to 7,215,928. The paper also posted a minor increase in page impressions of 96,376.