The Sun continues to expand its online audience after scrapping its paywall while the Telegraph has seen decline under its paid-for “premium content” model, new ABC figures show.
The Sun has more than doubled the number of unique browsers to its website year-on-year (up 115 per cent) welcoming 4.4m daily unique browsers on average in February.
The News UK title moved to a free online model in November 2015.
Meanwhile The Telegraph, which introduced a partial paywall in March last year, has seen a 6 per cent dip year-on-year down to just over 4m daily unique browsers per day.
It is the only national newspaper to have registered a year-on-year decline in website traffic for February according to ABC.
The Independent has grown its online audience by nearly 90 per cent year-on-year to 5.4m daily uniques. It is third behind the Mail Online and Guardian.
The Guardian, which has published its own figures while it switches to a new data analytics provider, say it saw daily visitors to its website climb by 17 per cent year-on-year to 9.2m p4er day on average.
The Metro, Evening Standard and Birmingham Mail saw rises of more than 40 per cent year-on-year.
Get Surrey, Trinity Mirror’s website covering the county, jumped up 58 per cent year-on-year.
The Mirror Group nationals, including the Daily Mirror, were up a quarter year-on-year but down 3 per cent month-on-month.
The Daily Star saw the biggest month-on-month decline, falling 11 per cent, but was up 27 per cent year-on-year.
The Daily Post in Wales was also up by a quarter year-on-year.
Online audience figures for February (source ABC):
| Website | Daily average unique visitors (Feb 17) |
% change month on month | % change year on year |
| MailOnline | 15,564,992 | -0.49 | 8.21 |
| Guardian (own figures) | 9,224,152 | 3.9 | 17.2 |
| The Independent | 5,472,724 | 13.29 | 87.34 |
| Mirror Group Nationals | 5,263,527 | -3.49 | 25.47 |
| The Sun | 4,410,613 | 3.83 | 115.49 |
| Telegraph | 4,069,576 | 0.62 | -5.99 |
| Metro | 1,710,757 | 7.54 | 43.88 |
| express.co.uk | 1,599,442 | -2.33 | 35.95 |
| dailystar.co.uk | 882,173 | -11.2 | 28.64 |
| Manchester Evening News | 758,367 | -3.48 | 17.57 |
| Evening Standard | 674,830 | 1.5 | 40.78 |
| Liverpool Echo | 531,689 | -4.31 | 6.75 |
| Wales Online | 404,572 | 5.91 | 17.81 |
| Birmingham Mail | 337,039 | -5.78 | 47.36 |
| Chronicle Live | 254,026 | -8.47 | 8.76 |
| Hull Daily Mail | 138,985 | 7.58 | – |
| GazetteLive | 126,381 | -5.93 | 9.45 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 121,509 | 21.55 | 25.44 |
| Bristol Post | 112,328 | -0.23 | – |
| Nottingham Post | 109,769 | -3.39 | – |
| Stoke Sentinel | 100,739 | 10.45 | – |
| Plymouth Herald | 96,390 | 2.37 | – |
| Leicester Mercury | 87,770 | 5.45 | – |
| Coventry Telegraph | 85,232 | -2.01 | 29.94 |
| Derby Telegraph | 80,629 | -10.11 | – |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 79,685 | -6.46 | 28.93 |
| Get Surrey | 72,953 | 24.37 | 58.66 |
| South Wales Evening Post | 62,839 | -6.46 | – |
| Cambridge News | 51,800 | -0.66 | – |
| Get Reading | 50,058 | 10.25 | 8.61 |
| Grimsby Telegraph | 43,781 | -6.66 | – |
| Visiter.co.uk | 13,638 | -7.42 | 17.14 |
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