The Telegraph Media Group's websites had a big rise in traffic last month with almost 5 million more unique users from February to March, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Guardian.co.uk was the most popular UK national newspaper website, though it fell from 19.5 million users in February to 18.7 million in March, a 4.18% drop. Year-on-year, it was up 35.92%.

Mail/Mail on Sunday gained 5.50% from February, moving from 17.0 million to almost 18 million unique users.

The Telegraph had a record 17 million unique users in March, a 38.69% month-on-month increase up from 12.2 million in February. It is now the third most popular UK national newspaper website, behind Guardian.co.uk and the Mail/Mail on Sunday.

The paper partly attributed to this success "to a string of major news stories" and "in depth coverage of the Budget for which it built a micro-site and commissioned exclusive videos on Telegraph TV," according to journalism.co.uk.

"March has been a tremendous month for us, with UK and global traffic more than doubling year on year," said Barry Flanigan, marketing director, Telegraph Media Group. "We are extremely pleased with the way our multimedia strategy has helped drive performance and our Budget coverage is a great example of this."

Mirror Group Digital debuted its ABCe figures this month with 4.4 million unique users for March.

For more statistics, go here and here.

Source: Guardian.co.uk, Journalism.co.uk