Times Online jumps to second place among newspaper sites

by Jacquie Bowser, Brand Republic 26-Jul-07, 13:20

LONDON - Times Online added around 1m unique users during June, making it the second most popular newspaper website in the country behind Guardian Unlimited, according to the latest ABC Electronic figures.

The Times website passed sister News International site The Sun Online during the month ending June 30, registering 9.6m unique users, compared with 8.7m the previous month.

This is a positive result for Times Online, suggesting its £10m relaunch in March this year is continuing to attract new visitors.

The Sun's website reported 9m unique users for the month, including traffic to thesun.co.uk, newsoftheworld.co.uk and page3.com, which was the same as the figure it posted in May.

Despite the relaunch of its front page in May, visits to guardian.co.uk dropped by around 1.5m unique users during June to 14.5m users, compared with the 16.1m unique users it recorded the month before. The Guardian plans to roll out its new look to the rest of the site gradually.

The Telegraph also failed to report any significant increases in traffic for June. It reported 7.1m unique users, own from 7.3m the month before.

The ABCe figures provide a common benchmark for web traffic, based on reporting standards; companies engaged by publishers to measure their figures, such as Hitwise and Web Side Story, must adhere to this.

Comments

Mark Smith - 26/07/2007

Jacquie Do you think this is proof positive the Guardian website relaunch/refresh/new front page whatever they called it, has been a failure?

Simon Devitt - 26/07/2007

I wonder why the Timesonline includes traffic from The Sunday Times Wine Club in their ABC Traffic Audit for June?

Mark Smith - 26/07/2007

Because it will inflate their ABC figure? I think it strange the sun, notw and page3 are grouped together. the paper abc isn't for those titles so why is the electronic ABC?

Jacquie Bowser - 26/07/2007

Hi Mark, I guess we can only look at the figures. Before its front page "refresh", The Guardian's website received 15.2m unique users during April. Then during May (when the refresh occured) it recorded 16.1m users (perhaps this figure was caused by people just wanting to check out the new look?). Now, in June, that figure is down to 14.5m. That's quite a drop. I think we should wait until next month to see what sort of figures are reported and if Guardian's numbers are still low - perhaps the "refresh" has been a failure... Although, they haven't implemented all their changes to the site yet so that might make a difference in the end.

Mark Smith - 26/07/2007

Thanks Jacquie. I guess you're right - wait and see. How many unique users does your website have?

Jacquie Bowser - 26/07/2007

No problem Mark. The last figure I heard was about 250,000 unique users a month.

Peter Petrelli - 26/07/2007

I believe I can fly

James Collier - 27/07/2007

Right. And I find international figures particularly useful. It makes a huge amount of difference to agencies knowing the figure for people reading the Guardian in Guatemala I'm sure.