Guardian holds on to top spot as Telegraph tumbles

by Jacquie Bowser, Brand Republic 24-Jan-08, 13:00

LONDON - The UK's newspaper websites suffered a significant fall in unique users during December, with Telegraph.co.uk being hardest hit and losing more than 2m users, which pushed it below the Times Online, according to the latest ABCe newspaper website figures.

Telegraph.co.uk, which rocketed to third place in the ranks during November, fell back to fourth with 10.5m unique users, down from 12.8m recorded the month before. Its page impressions also took a tumble, falling from 109m to 99m.

Times Online, which includes timesonline.co.uk and www.sunday-times.co.uk, suffered less of a decline, helping it climb back to third place. It recorded 11.2m unique users during December, down by around 1m from the month before. The site's page impressions also fell from 92m to 82m.

Guardian Unlimited, which includes guardian.co.uk and observer.co.uk, again holds on to the top spot, despite a fall of around 1.5m unique users. The network reported a total of 16m unique users and 137m page impressions, down from 160m in November.

The Daily Mail online network, which covers dailymail.co.uk and mailonsunday.co.uk, remains in second place. It too suffered a loss of around 1m unique users, falling to 13.6m. The site's page impressions also fell, from 115m to 106m.

The Sun Online network, covering thesun.co.uk, page3.co.uk and newsoftheworld.co.uk, could not maintain its strong performance from the month before and suffered a loss of around 1m unique users to 10.5m. Its page impressions were also down, falling from 215m in November to 213m in December.

The Independent.co.uk, which relaunched yesterday, signed up for its web traffic to be audited by ABC Electronic in August last year has not yet released any figures.