The Guardian website has done it again - the newspaper's website has just announced it has achieved its second record-breaking month in a row with nearly 37 million unique users for December, according to its website.

This surpassed its November record by 3.32%, according to figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic.
Mail Online took second spot with the highest month-on-month increase of 5.10%, followed by Telegraph Online.

The Guardian's News and Media director of digital content, Emily Bell, is attributing the Guardian's online portal's success to its thorough reporting. She explains that the thorough coverage of the Copenhagen climate change conference resulted in EnvironmentGuardian.co.uk seeing a 15% month-on-month increase, and an increase in average daily unique visitors from all over the world as well.

Mail Online and the Daily Mail & General's Trust's website network also experienced strong growth in December. Telegraph held steady, while Sun Online saw increases in visitors.

These increases in unique visitors only highlight the outstanding importance of news content online both for content creators and consumers. Bigger online audiences could bring in more advertising revenue for newspapers.

The Guardian was the biggest UK newspaper website in terms of UK unique users, with over 12 million last month. Mail Online came in at a close second with a bit over 11 million, while Telegraph ranked third with around 10 million.

Despite having a large number of online readers which could signal a high number of paying consumers if the Guardian chose to erect a paywall, the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, explained at a lecture this week that his paper will not operate behind one.

Even though making people pay for your content universally might be the right direction in "business terms", Rusbridger believes that in editorial terms, it reduces a newspaper's access and influence. He added that editors "cannot control distribution or create scarcity without becoming isolated from this new networked world."