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Top 10 UK Newspapers' Online Audiences Continue to Grow

In August, The Guardian’s website was the most popular among national UK newspaper sites - as it has been for all of the previous 12 months - with 2.7 million unique visitors, equivalent of 1 in 13 online Britons, according to (pdf) a Nielsen/NetRatings analysis of the 10 most popular national newspapers in the UK.

Top 10 UK newspapers’ unique-visitor data, according to Nielsen/NetRatings:

• For the first time in 2007, The Sun (2.0 million uniques) lost second spot; it is now third behind the Telegraph (2.1 million uniques) in terms of popularity.
• Overall, 7.4 million Britons (23% of Britons online) visited at least one of the ten most popular national newspaper websites

“Whilst the Guardian and Daily Mail have consistently remained the most and fifth[-most] popular, respectively, over the last year the battle for the places in-between has see-sawed between the Sun, Times and Telegraph,” said Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst, Nielsen/NetRatings.

“August is the first month of 2007 not to see a Guardian-Sun-one-two, with the Telegraph coming into second spot - being ahead of both the Sun and the Times for the first time,” Burmaster added.

Top 10 - audience growth, according to NetRatings:

• The number of Britons visiting at least one of the Top 10 grew from 5.6 million in December 2006 to 7.4 million in August 2007 - a growth of 30%
• The Daily Mail has experienced the greatest growth among the Top 10 across 2007, more than doubling its audience from 0.7 million in December 2006 to 1.4 million in August 2007 (117% growth).
• The Telegraph is the only other of the Top 10 to at least double its audience, growing 106% from 1.0 million to 2.1 million.

“The leading UK national papers online have achieved excellent growth since the start of the year. As a group, they’ve experienced 30% growth which is particularly impressive considering the online audience itself has grown by just over 9% in the same period. This means, as a group, the leading nationals online are growing at three times the rate of overall UK Internet growth,” Burmaster said.

Top 10 - audience usage by time, according to NetRatings:

• More time was spent on The Sun (53 million minutes) than any other UK newspaper, followed by the Daily Mail (49 million minutes)
• The Daily Mail (34 minutes) and The Sun (26 minutes) also had the highest average times per visitor

About the analysis: The data come from Nielsen/NetRatings’s panel of 40,000+ UK Internet users whose PC and online behavior is tracked and measured on a continuous and ongoing basis. Audience-figure data refer to UK internet users accessing the internet only from home or work; not included ar overseas visitors or UK visitors accessing the internet from non-home/work locations (e.g., educational establishments, Internet cafe’s, airports).