Telegraph overtakes Guardian as top newspaper site

by Ann-Marie Corvin Media Week 22-May-08, 15:40

LONDON - The Telegraph and the Daily Mail's websites were the fastest-growing among all newspaper publishers' online services in the past year, according to ABCe data.

Telegraph.co.uk's online's unique user base soared by 153% between April 2007 and April 2008, according to the latest ABCe figures, which put the portal ahead of guardian.co.uk for the first time as the UK's most-visited newspaper website.

Dailymail.co.uk posted the second biggest year-on-year rise in unique users, with a year-on-year rise of 92%, to 18 million users last month.

News International's stable of online offerings posted the third-biggest year-on-year growth - up 72.9% year on year - with The Sun claiming 14 million users in April (a 71% rise year on year), and 15.4 million users visited the Times Online website (a 73% rise year on year).

Figures for Mirror Group's network of websites, including Mirror.co.uk, SundayMirror.co.uk and People.co.uk, fell from March to April. The site, which released its first ABCe figure last month, dropped 2.87% to 4.28 million unique users.

Seperately, web standards committee Jicwebs has announced that it will review the methodologies for national newspapers that ABCe then audits to industry standards.

The committee said the review would aim to further improve the comparability of industry standards, by addressing potential variances.