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March 16, 2017updated 23 Aug 2022 7:19pm

Online ABCs: Free Sun more than doubles website traffic as partial paywall sees Telegraph fall

By Freddy Mayhew

The Sun continues to expand its online audience after scrapping its paywall while the Telegraph has seen decline under its paid-for “premium content” model, new ABC figures show.

The Sun has more than doubled the number of unique browsers to its website year-on-year (up 115 per cent) welcoming 4.4m daily unique browsers on average in February.

The News UK title moved to a free online model in November 2015.

Meanwhile The Telegraph, which introduced a partial paywall in March last year, has seen a 6 per cent dip year-on-year down to just over 4m daily unique browsers per day.

It is the only national newspaper to have registered a year-on-year decline in website traffic for February according to ABC.

The Independent has grown its online audience by nearly 90 per cent year-on-year to 5.4m daily uniques. It is third behind the Mail Online and Guardian.

The Guardian, which has published its own figures while it switches to a new data analytics provider, say it saw daily visitors to its website climb by 17 per cent year-on-year to 9.2m p4er day on average.

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The Metro, Evening Standard and Birmingham Mail saw rises of more than 40 per cent year-on-year.

Get Surrey, Trinity Mirror’s website covering the county, jumped up 58 per cent year-on-year.

The Mirror Group nationals, including the Daily Mirror, were up a quarter year-on-year but down 3 per cent month-on-month.

The Daily Star saw the biggest month-on-month decline, falling 11 per cent, but was up 27 per cent year-on-year.

The Daily Post in Wales was also up by a quarter year-on-year.

Online audience figures for February (source ABC):

Website Daily average unique visitors
(Feb 17)
% change month on month % change year on year
MailOnline 15,564,992 -0.49 8.21
Guardian (own figures) 9,224,152 3.9 17.2
The Independent 5,472,724 13.29 87.34
Mirror Group Nationals 5,263,527 -3.49 25.47
The Sun 4,410,613 3.83 115.49
Telegraph 4,069,576 0.62 -5.99
Metro 1,710,757 7.54 43.88
express.co.uk 1,599,442 -2.33 35.95
dailystar.co.uk 882,173 -11.2 28.64
Manchester Evening News 758,367 -3.48 17.57
Evening Standard 674,830 1.5 40.78
Liverpool Echo 531,689 -4.31 6.75
Wales Online 404,572 5.91 17.81
Birmingham Mail 337,039 -5.78 47.36
Chronicle Live 254,026 -8.47 8.76
Hull Daily Mail 138,985 7.58  –
GazetteLive 126,381 -5.93 9.45
Daily Post (Wales) 121,509 21.55 25.44
Bristol Post 112,328 -0.23  –
Nottingham Post 109,769 -3.39  –
Stoke Sentinel 100,739 10.45  –
Plymouth Herald 96,390 2.37  –
Leicester Mercury 87,770 5.45  –
Coventry Telegraph 85,232 -2.01 29.94
Derby Telegraph 80,629 -10.11  –
Huddersfield Daily Examiner 79,685 -6.46 28.93
Get Surrey 72,953 24.37 58.66
South Wales Evening Post 62,839 -6.46  –
Cambridge News 51,800 -0.66  –
Get Reading 50,058 10.25 8.61
Grimsby Telegraph 43,781 -6.66  –
Visiter.co.uk 13,638 -7.42 17.14

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