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ABCe: Guardian widens gap at top, Times breaks 20m

By Paul McNally

Guardian.co.uk widened the gap with Telegraph.co.uk by a further 188,000 users to cement its position as the most-visited national newspaper website in September.

Official figures released this afternoon by ABCe show the Guardian’s web traffic last month was up 4.65 per cent on August and 44.8 per cent year on year to a new high of 24.19m unique users.

The site is now 1.24m users ahead of the second-ranked Telegraph.co.uk, the gap was 1.05m last month.

The Telegraph site gained 4.02 per cent month on month and 115.55 per cent year on year to post a September unique user figure of 22.95m.

Telegraph Media Group digital editor Ed Roussel said: ‘Telegraph.co.uk benefited from a surge in demand for stories about the US election and the financial crisis, which helped raise the number of page views and unique users to a record high.’

Times Online has broken the 20m unique user barrier and accelerated further ahead of Mail Online after leapfrogging it last month to take third position.

The News International title saw a 3.21 per cent increase in monthly traffic compared with August, and it was up 62.11 per cent year on year to 20.32m.

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The gap between Times Online and the fourth-ranked Mail Online now stands at 2.41m unique users – up 186,000 on last month’s gap of 2.22m.

Mail Online’s unique user base rose 2.55 per cent compared with August, and was up 53.24 per cent year on year to 17.91m.

The Sun Online lost traffic compared with the holiday month of August. It fell 1.26 per cent to 15.78m but was still up 47.86 per cent year on year.

The fifth-ranked Independent.co.uk saw the biggest month-on-month rise, up 20.62 per cent and was just 4,000 users short of the 8m mark. Its year-on-year gain was 96.83 per cent.

The Mirror Group of websites – including the Mirror titles and the People – also slipped in September, down 5.65 per cent month on month to 5.26m unique users.

An official year-on-year comparison is not yet available but Trinity Mirror claimed traffic was up 60 per cent according to internal figures.

Trinity Mirror Nationals managing director Mark Hollinshead said: ‘The development of mirror.co.uk is ongoing and we continue to grow an engaged, UK audience delivering strong year-on-year growth.’

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