Guardian.co.uk held onto the top place for unique users, but suffered a 12.34 per cent month-on-month decrease, according to the December 2008 report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe).

Meanwhile, TheSun.co.uk saw a significant increase since November 2008: its unique user traffic rose to 18,961,552, a 15.42 per cent increase, when compared to its performance in the last report.

MailOnline overtook TimesOnline as the third most popular news site in the UK.

The full figures for the six audited titles and Mirror Group's websites are listed below, in rank order by number of unique users. The percentage in brackets indicates the month-on-month change compared with November's ABCe report:

Guardian.co.uk
Unique users: 22,829,024 (- 12.34 per cent); +43.08 per cent year-on-year

Telegraph.co.uk
Unique users: 21,051,959 (-8.30 per cent); +99.55 per cent year-on-year

MailOnline
Unique users: 19,663,467 (-5.78 per cent); +44.27 per cent year-on-year

TimesOnline
Unique users: 19,116,658 (-11.49 per cent); +71.09 per cent year-on-year

TheSun.co.uk
Unique users: 18,961,552 (+15.43 per cent); +81.02 per cent year-on-year

Independent.co.uk
Unique users: 8,752,008 (-1.53 per cent); +165.86 per cent year-on-year

Mirror Group
Unique users: 5,324,463 (-10 per cent);  year-on-year not available