The Independent was the fastest growing national newspaper website in December and the only site to record a month-on-month increase in traffic, according to figures released by ABC.
The Independent, which relaunched its website at the start of November, grew its global audience by 16.5 per cent to 15.8m unique browsers.
Mail Online remained the top UK national newspaper website with 84.1m unique browsers, a slight month-on-month dip which is unsurprising for the holiday month of December.
According to Comscore, Mail Online is now the most popular newspaper website in the world and has overtaken the New York Times. Their figures gave it 45.3m online readers in December.
The ABC figures count "unique browsers" – which are different computers accessing the site as recorded by server logs.
UK national newspaper website figures December 2012 (source ABC)
Daily figures:
(Name of site; average daily unique browsers; percentage change year on year; month on month)
MailOnline : 4,838,140 ; 58.89 ; -5.03
guardian.co.uk : 2,937,070 ; 31.45 ; -20.61
Telegraph : 2,156,001 ; 36.17 ; -8.16
The Sun : 1,339,077 ; N/A ; -10.44
The Independent : 758,524 ; 50.35 ; 10.56
Mirror Group Digital : 726,653 ; 44.19 ; -4.23
Metro : 335,629 ; N/A ; -7.45
Standard.co.uk : 130,133 ; N/A ; -18.37
Monthly figures:
(Name of site; monthly unique browsers; percentage change year on year; month on month)
MailOnline : 84,172,568 ; 56.04 ; -0.95
Telegraph : 42,699,603 ; 37.35 ; -4.74
The Sun : 22,132,021 ; N/A ; -8.63
The Independent : 15,833,084 ; 43.40 ; 16.45
Mirror Group Digital : 16,311,555 ; 46.95 ; 0.04
Metro : 8,226,791 ; N/A ; -4.61
Standard.co.uk : 3,199,013 ; N/A ; -13.94
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