Following the traffic surge reported by telegraph.co.uk, when the site added more than 6 million unique users in just two months leading up to its May traffic report, others newspaper publishers are calling for increased transparency in collection of data for the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic certificates (ABCe).

The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (Jicwebs) will now review reporting practices and consider potential changes to the ABCe system.

Seven national newspaper websites currently report monthly website traffic: guardian.co.uk, Times Online, Sun Online, telegraph.co.uk, Mail Online, independent.co.uk and Mirror Group Digital.

"It is clear that many factors can play a role in how much traffic a website achieves. These include web management, marketing (including search engine optimisation and search engine marketing), seasonality and the news agenda," Jicwebs said in a statement.

One possible change to the ABCe methodology would be for all newspaper web domains to report monthly audits which contribute to their totals, and would be included in the reported figures. Under current regulations, publishers only have to declare the web domains that generate the highest number of page views that count toward monthly traffic audits. Other smaller sections of each national newspaper's website network do not have to be listed.

Source: guardian.co.uk