The number of monthly unique users on Metro.co.uk should hit five million by the end of the year, the daily commuter title pledged as part of a set of targets outlined today, Journalism.co.uk reported.

According to figures presented by Metro, the site had 3.5 million unique monthly browsers on average in November 2010, compared to around one million in November 2009.

Although this figure is low compared to the numbers at the websites major UK dailies, it is interesting that the freesheet's traffic is increasing even in an arena where most competitors' sites are also free.

The article quoted Rich Mead, Metro's assistant managing director, who said this is just the starting point.

As Guardian's Roy Greenslade noted, Metro is far and away Britain's most successful national newspaper: over the past year its distribution has increased as well as its advertising volume and revenue.

Associated Newspapers, the paper's publisher, would not share individual publications' figures, but the Metro team claimed 2010 was Metro's best year.

Greenslade highlighted that Metro is ranked third in terms of national daily circulation with an ABC-audited distribution of 1.38m copies a day, considering in addition that it is not published on Saturdays - when paid-for nationals enjoy their greatest sales.

The success is not only in terms circulation: advertising managed to record 11% growth between 2009 and 2010 as well as the major growth in traffic.

Despite the positive wave, according to Greenslade "one thing that upsets the Metro bosses is the way in which the paper is generally overlooked, consciously or unconsciously, by the rest of the media. It doesn't figure on some TV and radio newspaper round-ups, for example, and its headlines are rarely quoted".

"I'm not so surprised by that," concluded Greenslade. "Metro offers readers bland, passive, reactive journalism. But it is passionate, committed, investigative pro-active journalism that makes a difference to and for society".

Source: Journalism.co.uk, Guardian