UK: Nielsen Online: Guardian "UK's most popular newspaper website"

The Guardian's website drew 3 million online users in April, maintaining its position as UK's most popular newspaper website, according to Nielsen Online.

But its grip on the top spot is slipping.

Telegraph.co.uk, which holds second-place with 2.7 million unique users, experienced a traffic growth of 77%, dwarfing the Guardian's 24% increase.

Trailing Telegraph.co.uk were, in order, the Sun Online, the Times Online, and the Daily Mail.

Telegraph.co.uk owes its surge in popularity to a proliferating number of "light" visitors, users who spend less than five minutes on the website, said Stephen Brooks, UK managing director of Nielsen Online. According to Nielsen, light users now constitute 81% of all traffic.

"Analysing the Telegraph's audience by heavy, medium and light visitors reveals their dramatic growth in popularity is concentrated around light users, which could be due to the site's improved visibility in search results," Brooks said.

Nielsen's announcement follows recent studies by ABCe and comScore Inc., each of which crowned a different newspaper - Telegraph.co.uk and Sun Online respectively - as most popular. PaidContent UK's Robert Andrews' advice: "You can pretty much pick your own winner."

Source: PaidContent UK, Brand Republic