Newspaper sites show growth despite February blip

by John Reynolds, Media Week 20-Mar-08, 15:45

LONDON - Telegraph.co.uk is closing on The Sun Online's position as the UK's fourth most-popular newspaper website, according to the ABCe figures.

In January, The Sun Online attracted 973,829 more unique users than Telegraph.co.uk, but last month that gap had closed to 243,081. While Telegraph.co.uk's unique user base had fallen between January and February, by 0.53 per cent, The Sun Online's user base declined more sharply by nearly 800,000 users.

The pair, though, still lag behind the top three newspaper websites, Guardian.co.uk, Dailymail.co.uk and Timesonline.co.uk.

Last month, Guardian.co.uk was the most-visited site with 19.5 million unique users, followed by Dailymail.co.uk with 17.5 million and Timesonline.co.uk with 14.7 million unique users.

All five newspaper groups, which publish officially audited figures, posted traffic declines in February.

The Sun Online suffered the sharpest drop in online traffic, down by 5.97 per cent last month.

However, all national newspaper groups that published officially audited web traffic figures in February 2007 posted significant year-on-year growth in their online user bases.