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June 18, 2015updated 23 Jun 2015 9:01pm

Website ABCs: Telegraph floors rivals with Mayweather fight coverage, BBC wins most general election readers

By William Turvill

National newspaper websites failed to capitalise on the general election to the same extent as BBC News online, according to the latest ABCs.

But the Telegraph attracted a record 17m unique browers on 3 May, including 10.6m on mobile devices, mainly thanks to its  blog coverage of a boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. This was the single best day of any national newspaper website in the month.

The BBC's own figures show that the news site recorded 18.1m unique browsers on voting day, 7 May, and 28.3m the next day. It claimed that 19.3m of the unique users on 8 May went exclusively to its Election 2015 content.

These figues are higher than any of the audited numbers provided by ABC for newspaper websites on those days.

The biggest newspaper website, Mail Online, recorded 13.8m average unique browsers throughout the month, up 25.6 per  cent year on year, and peaked on 5 May at 15.5m but dipped to 13.7m on 8 May – the day of BBC News's record traffic.

On the same day The Guardian's website attracted 9.9m, which was its best day of a month in which it averaged 7.5m.

The Telegraph website recorded an average unique daily browser count of 4.9m during the month, and 6.9m on 8 May.

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The BBC figures were presented at a London School of Economics event by BBC News online editor Steve Herrmann.

How the biggest newspaper websites compared with BBC News's election week performance

Note: Newspaper figures are from ABC, BBC figures are its own

Election week unique browsers in millions BBC News Mail Online Guardian Telegraph Mirror
4 May 14 15.5 8.1 6.7 5
5 May 14.1 15.5 8.3 5.3 4.4
6 May 16 14.9 8.4 4.8 4.9
Polling day 18.1 14.2 8.8 5.6 4
8 May 28.3 13.7 9.9 6.9 4.7
9 May 12.8 12.1 6.9 3.7 3.9
10 May 12.3 12.8 7 3.8 4.9

The Mirror's website was the best performing national in terms of year-on-year change, up 77.4 per cent.

Of the Trinity Mirror regional sites included in the ABC count, the Manchester Evening News was the best performing, up 130 per cent to 620,275, and has now overtaken the Daily Star website.

National newspaper website figures for May 2015 – source ABC

Website Average daily unique users, May 2015 Month-on-month % change Year-on-year % change
MailOnline 13,812,919 1.27 25.57
theguardian.com 7,504,946 4.17 37.48
Trinity Mirror Group 6,075,946 14.24 79.78
Telegraph 4,907,466 22.58 52.31
Mirror Group Nationals 4,347,126 16.33 77.38
The Independent 2,637,959 13.11 60.07
Trinity Mirror Regional Network 1,992,949 12.29  
Metro 1,453,532 11.16 18.74
express.co.uk 839,410 7.49 48.03
Manchester Evening News 620,275 24.55 129.93
dailystar.co.uk 580,168 14.12 22.54
Evening Standard 443,465 13.3 75.05
Liverpool Echo 428,421 8.85 96.95
Wales Online 220,597 -0.4 25.52
Birmingham Mail 203,855 10.23 80.2
Newcastle Chronicle 195,527 6.76 75.8
Teesside Evening Gazette 100,883 26.18 123.16
Daily Post (Wales) 60,499 11.31  
Coventry Telegraph 53,964 9.73 23.24
Huddersfield Daily Examiner 49,828 8.61  
The Journal 14,654 4.25  
Visiter.co.uk 10,513    

 

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