Visitor numbers to the News of the World’s website reached a record daily high of 585,000 last Sunday, according to the title. NOTW’s of pop singer Stephen Gately’s death, which ran that day, boosted the total, with 290,000 visits for that one day.

The traffic surge caused the website to proclaim victory of its printed rival The People, which sold fewer copies in print on the same day, the NOTW release boasted.

In comparison with last month’s Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) average daily unique user figures for other national newspaper sites, 585,000 may be a record for the News of the World, but other papers’ sites posted higher figures for August. Admittedly the NOTW figure was UK-only visitors, but average daily visits for TheSun.co.uk last month, for example, was 1,411,227.