Figures show that in May, Mail Online pipped the Telegraph by receiving 18,712,533 unique users, a rise of 3.73 per cent from the previous month when it was just the third most popular newspaper site.
Year-on-year the Mail’s traffic has grown 100.19 per cent with the Telegraph registering 154.26 per cent growth in the same period.
The Telegraph registered 18,497,944 unique users last month, a slight drop of 0.79 per cent from its all time high of 18,646,112 in April.
Publication last month of The Telegraph’s April traffic figures made it the nation’s most popular newspaper website, knocking the Guardian off the top for the first time ever, and sent the online journalism community into something of a head spin as it sought to explain how the publication could have added in excess of six million unique users in two months when it had been widely expected that the Mail would be the one to steal a march on the Guardian and head the popularity stakes.
The Guardian has therefore dropped from first to third in just two months.
Today’s figures show that it recorded 18,323,824 unique visitors last month. A slight drop of 1.20 per cent from the previous month.
However, the reality is that the margins between the Guardian, Mail and the Telegraph are so slight as to render them redundant for anything other than bragging rights. It’s quite likely that the coming months will show them leapfrogging each other into first place.
Domestically the Guardian still drew the biggest audience with 7,664,856 of its 18,323,824 users coming from the UK. The Telegraph drew 6,077,012 of its users from the UK. While the Mail drew 5,090,981 domestic users.
The Guardian’s year-on-year growth of total unique users of 14.08 per cent confirms that along with the online operations of the Telegraph and the Mail it’s in rude health as far as visitor numbers are concerned.
The more pressing worry for publishers is sustaining those levels and turning eyeballs into hard cash so that online platforms - across all publications - can generate more heavy revenues and start to pay for themselves.
Of the other online newspaper titles reporting monthly traffic today, Times Online recorded 15,877,693 unique users, a 3.06 per cent rise on last months figure and a year-on-year rise of 81.87 per cent.
News International stable mate Sun Online was close behind with 14,948,080 unique users last month, a rise of 6.25 on the previous month, a year-on-year increase of 66.05 per cent and a record high for the newspaper.
The Independent - debuting its traffic figures - registered 6,533,792 unique users last month, although having not published results in May, or last May, month-on-month and year-on-year comparisons were not possible.
The Mirror Group Digital registered 4,829,899 unique users last month, a rise of 12.91 on the previous month's traffic across its titles. A year-on-year comparison was not available.
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