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Top 40 UK news websites list puts BBC top

By Press Gazette

New figures from UKOM/Nielsen suggest that the BBC is still well ahead of the Daily Mail when it comes to online news readership in the UK.

Figures compiled for Press Gazette state that the BBC news website had 11.14m online readers/viewers in May compared with 6.3m readers across the month for Mail Online in the UK.

The UKOM/Nielsen data is based on a survey of 50,000 website users across the UK and tends to provide lower figures than ABC – which bases its website traffic numbers on server data revealing the number of different computers (or unique browsers) which have logged on to a site.

Last week ABC’s figures revealed 77.25m worldwide unique browsers for Mail Online – a figure which may have surpassed the worldwide total for BBC News. The BBC does not publish separately audited figures for its news websites.

Here Press Gazette lists the top 40 UK news websites, according to the Nielsen survey:

(Name of website: unique audience for May 2011 in thousands; percentage change year on year)

1 BBC: 11,140; -12%

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2 MailOnline: 6,272; 12%

3 Guardian.co.uk: 5,175; -2%

4 Telegraph: 4,991; -7%

5 Yahoo! News Websites: 4,471; -11%

6 Newsquest Local Media: 2,824; 12%

7 Trinity Mirror Nationals: 2,629; 3%

8 The Sun: 2,591; -15%

9 MSN News & Weather: 2,337; -23%

10 The Independent: 2,099; 3%

11 AOL News: 1,785; -1%

12 Sky News: 1,710; -30%

13 Bing News: 1,425; 141%

14 METRO.co.uk: 1,391; n/a

15 The Times/The Sunday Times (previously Times Online): 1,335; -59%

16 CNN Digital Network: 1,260; 17%

17 Google News: 1,234; -56%

18 MSNBC Digital Network: 961; -27%

19 World News Network : 734; n/a

20 London Evening Standard: 648; -12%

21 News of the World: 608; -48%

22 NYTimes.com: 597; -10%

23 France 24: 589; 27%

24 Trinity Mirror Regionals: 522; -24%

25 Scotsman.com: 489; -13%

26 BBC Worldwide on YouTube: 488; n/a

27 TheHuffingtonPost.com: 459; 26%

28 Guardian Media Group: 414; -46%

29 Daily Express: 405; -21%

30 Tribune Newspapers: 398; 50%

31 CBS News Network: 389; -32%

32 WalesOnline: 376; -5%

33 India Times: 358; 124%

34 Orange News: 353; -5%

35 ABCNEWS Digital Network: 344; 92%

36 Daily Star: 342; -3%

37 Newsquest Media Group: 325; -50%

38 NewsNow.co.uk: 319; -6%

39 Fox News Digital Network: 256; 24%

40 washingtonpost.com: 253; 41%

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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