The Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic released figures for the number of unique visitors to UK national and regional newspaper websites this week.

While some national newspapers continue to attract new readers every month, some regional newspapers are struggling to keep their online readership up.

ABCes: Top UK national newspaper websites

Mail Online, part of the Daily Mail and General Trust website network, takes the top spot as most popular UK newspaper website for January with 2.16 million unique browsers per day on average, says Guardian.

The latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic reveal that the Daily Mail has surpassed the Guardian on average visitors per day.

The ABCes from January were collected with a new system that uses average daily unique browsers as the headline metric for determining the traffic of UK national newspaper websites, instead of the monthly unique users measure used in the past.

According to Guardian, this is "regarded as a better measure of regular visitors."

The top spot went to Mail Online with a 13.5% month-on-month increase and a whopping 56.8% year-on-year increase in unique daily browsers in January. Their website recorded 35.9 million monthly unique users.

After four months as the champion of unique users, Guardian.co.uk lost its spot with 1.9 million unique browsers per day on average - a 2.3% month-on-month average and a 20.6% year-on-year increase. Guardian says that MediaGuardian and Observer content recorded 35.9 million monthly unique users.

Guardian accepted the new figures gracefully, adding that even if they lost their top stop, "ever-growing daily figures are great news for all of the UK's newspaper websites."

Telegraph.co.uk took third spot with 1.7 million unique browsers per day, a
ABCes: Top UK regional newspaper websites

Regional newspaper websites saw "mixed results," with some scoring readership increases and some enduring steep drops, according to HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

The ABCe figures show that while GMG Regional Media saw decreases, Northcliffe Media (part of the Daily Mail and General Trust) is posting increases.

Overall, the greatest losses were endured by GMG Regional Media (a decrease of over 12 percent from July to December of 2009), while Northcliffe Media's network of 'thisis' websites and Newsquest saw positive results. Newsquest saw a 21.3% increase on its network for the same time period.

Sources: Guardian, Hold the Front Page