According to traffic data released today by the ABCe, 11,865,039 unique users visited Mail Online - combining figures of Dailymail.co.uk and MailonSunday.co.uk sites - in July.
The Mail's audit showed an 82 per cent gain in users on a previous unpublished audit figure of 6,518,774 from March, this year, and a significant increase from March 2006, when the ABCe recorded just 2,432,103 unique users.
The newspaper site will now join the Guardian, the Sun, Times, and the Telegraph, in reporting its website traffic on a monthly basis.
"There is no way round it, we have been growing incredibly quickly," Martin Clarke, editorial director of Mail Online, told Journalism.co.uk.
"We only really got into this a year or so ago, so obviously we are very pleased because both our global and UK traffic have massively increased.
"How you rank sites depends on which metric you consider most important, at the moment no-one group publishes enough of those figures to really get a handle on it.
"Every site has its different strengths and how you rank them depends on what metric you consider the most important, but whichever way you add them up, we are now one of the top five sites.
"We're one of the big players now, and as far as we're concerned this is the foundation on which we build everything else."
This latest audit places the Mail Online second only to the Guardian as the most popular national newspaper website in the UK.
The Guardian also recorded traffic gains, increasing the number of unique visitors to the site by 11 per cent since June, with 16,058,979 visiting in July, up from 14,514,091 the previous month.
The Telegraph's online audience also rose sharply to 8,992,526 in July, from 7,053,297 the previous month - a gain of 27.5 per cent.
The Times, which Mail Online has replaced as the second most popular national newspaper website in the UK, saw a traffic increase to 10,536,915 up from 9,647,607 in June - a gain of roughly nine per cent.
The Sun continued its steady monthly climb registering 9,435,509 visitors in July, up from 9,021,249 in June - a rise of 4.6 per cent - its fifth month of increased figures after falling from a January high of 9,543,772.
Free daily newsletter
If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).
Related articles
- Kellie Riordan, podcast strategist, on how ABC made podcasts a hit during lockdown
- Creating space to experiment is key for transition from print to digital-only
- ABC: UK titles' daily web traffic drops across the board in December
- ABC: Daily traffic to UK titles soars during news-heavy November
- ABC: Metro daily traffic goes up by a quarter in October while other titles stall
