Associated Newspapers will relaunch Mail Online “in the near future”, mad.co.uk reports.

In December’s ABCe figures, Mail Online closed within 2.3 million monthly users of Guardian Unlimited — the closest any competitor has ever come to catching the market-leading newspaper web site.

When the December figures were released late last month, Mail Online editorial director Martin Clarke told mad.co.uk he would be disappointed if the Associated title didn’t close the gap even further in January — and he would have had a pretty good idea of the unaudited January figures by then.