As the Daily Mail leapt to number two this week in the official ABC newspaper website rankings – new research for Press Gazette has revealed that it is now the number one UK newspaper website in the US.
According to Nielson/Netratings, just three years after its launch – dailymail.co.uk has overtaken The Guardian, which has long been established as the number one UK newspaper state-side.
The UK titles now make up numbers six and seven in a top ten list of the most popular newspaper websites with US readers.
Last week, The Mail featured in the ABCe figures for the first time since March 2006 and revealed that it had more than doubled readership to 11.87 million a month. This beat both The Times on 10.54 million total, the Sun on 9.44 million and the Telegraph on 8.99 million.
The Guardian is still the number one UK newspaper website with 16.6 million readers a month.
The Mail’s internet success appears to have been due to a web-first news policy spearheaded by online editorial director Martin Clarke in May.
He said: ‘The only things we hold back are exclusive stories that obviously you wouldn’t want to give to your rivals. Otherwise, everything just goes online first.”
Despite the huge growth in popularity of UK newspaper overseas – both the Telegraph and Mail agreed that in the short term, it is UK readers which will count for advertisers.
The Guardian, however, maintained that it has ‘significant revenue streams’coming in from the United States.
For more on this story – and full analysis of the ABCe figures – see Press Gazette this week.
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