Guardian loses pole position online to The Sun

The Guardian has lost its leading position as the most visited newspaper website to The Sun after a 15% fall in unique users month on month. The latter has powered forward with a near 25% jump in traffic for February on January.

Quality newspapers across the board have seen a drop in their website traffic for February with the exception of Telegraph online, which has taken the number two slot. Guradian.co.uk dropped to 25,331,083, although was still up nearly 30% year-on-year.

But The Sun recorded 27,327,957 unique users in February, up 24.72% on the previous month and 118% year-on-year. Mirror Group Digital’s traffic also rose a more modest 5.12% to 6,987,103. It’s possible both sites picked up traffic from the intense coverage of the last weeks of former Big Brother contestant Jade Goody. She died last Sunday (March 22).

Also, online readers may be losing interest in deeper analysis of economic affairs and depressing news about the economy.

Telegraph online rose 1% to 26,169,362 month-on-month and Times Online fell 3.97% to 21,989,288. The Indepepdnet dropped 8.48% to 9,371,644.

Associated Newspaper’s Mail Online also dropped 4.53% to 21,842,107.

Newspaper publishers are currently wresting with the challenge of monetising their web audience and some are considering reintroducing subscription payments of certain content.

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