Mail Online: most visited UK website in June

Posted by Dawn Osakue on July 29, 2010 at 12:02 PM

Recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic have listed Mail Online as the top UK newspaper in terms of website traffic. Mail Online's website also recorded a 3.99% increase in visitors since May. The Guardian, The Independent, Mirror Group Digital and Telegraph made top five too.

Analysing the statistics, Jemima Kiss of the Guardian views the traffic increase as an experience shared by most UK national dailies because of the World Cup. She also describes the increase as relatively modest, because of "an audience perhaps saturated by coverage on multiple channels."

"Despite significant editorial efforts by all the newspaper sites" she writes, "most failed to generate significant traffic increases."

Robert Andrews of paidContent asks a different question: are these newspapers benefiting from the Times paywall? According to a research report by Experian Hitwise last month, "the biggest beneficiaries of traffic from a competitor perspective are the Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail and BBC News." Is it a coincidence that four of these websites have experienced increased traffic since the paywall was put in place?

Browsers for per day, unique browsers per month, percentage monthly year-on-year change reported by PressGazette are:

* Mail Online - 2,485,431 - 43,119,182 - 46.80
* Guardian.co.uk - 2,036,449 - 35,259,914 - 21.72
* The Independent - 492,375 - 10,592,144 - 13.26
* Mirror Group Digital - 527,564 - 11,182,776 - 18.43
* Telegraph - 1,775,765 - 33,634,623 - 23.77

News International's The Times and The Sun were not included in the survey because of their paywall policies.

Source: PressGazette, paidContent:UK, Guardian.co.uk,