The Sun today published its first website traffic figures for two years revealing that it is the least visited UK national newspaper website.
In July 2013 (before the launch of its online paywall) it reached an average of 1.9m readers a day. Last month it reached an average of just under 800,000.
The return to ABC auditing for The Sun website follows its decision to change tack and start making more content available for free online.
Sun editor David Dinsmore said: "Although we are very much at the start of putting selected content outside of the Sun+ subscription, we are seeing some good early traffic and we anticipate that numbers will continue to rise.
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“Our exclusives on the historic photos of the Queen and Lord Sewel’s drugs shame as well as our brilliant real life stories and Dear Deidre agony aunt letters, have ensured that The Sun’s online content sets the agenda.
“This strong first month online adds to a storming July for paper sales that saw circulations for The Sun and Sun on Sunday rise more than any of our competitors.”
The Manchester Evening News was the fastest growing newspaper website audited by ABC last month, more than doubling its traffic year on year.
Mail Online remains the biggest UK national newspaper website by some margin attracting an average of 14.3m unique browsers per day. This was its second biggest ever month, behind the 14.7m unique browsers per day it reached in February this year.
The Mirror said its traffic was boosted by content from new US-based editorial teams and by coverage of the UK football transfer market.
The ABC figures count different devices accessing website on any given day (rather than people).
UK newspaper website figures for July 2015 (source ABC)
| Title | Avg daily unique browsers | Month on month % change | Year on year % change |
| MailOnline | 14,280,708 | 4.73 | 29.36 |
| theguardian.com | 8,016,000 | 3.15 | 34.9 |
| Trinity Mirror Group – Digital | 6,351,331 | 4.42 | 35.92 |
| Telegraph | 4,543,149 | 10.86 | 22.55 |
| Mirror Group Nationals | 4,270,142 | 0.12 | 23.78 |
| The Independent | 2,460,341 | -3.58 | 19.73 |
| Trinity Mirror Regional Network | 2,309,657 | 11.6 | |
| Metro | 1,610,317 | 5.71 | 4.06 |
| express.co.uk | 1,323,641 | 28.76 | 48.2 |
| dailystar.co.uk | 1,025,286 | 33.31 | 53.37 |
| The Sun | 792,994 | ||
| Manchester Evening News | 701,717 | 22.39 | 106.92 |
| Evening Standard | 534,475 | 10.08 | 74.52 |
| Liverpool Echo | 514,040 | 9.89 | 43.84 |
| Birmingham Mail | 253,417 | 19.02 | 90.57 |
| Wales Online | 245,033 | -6.32 | 51.27 |
| Newcastle Chronicle | 232,832 | 6.64 | 43.87 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 99,272 | 5.45 | 51.58 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 77,117 | 9.28 | 94.46 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 60,493 | 2.59 | -36.66 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 52,979 | 10.61 | -0.27 |
| Visiter.co.uk | 9,308 | 0.37 | |
| The Journal | 9,124 | -28.31 |
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