Sky News has claimed it recorded a 58% increase of traffic in July, from last year’s 3 million monthly unique users to 4.8 million this year, as a result of people looking at its reporting of the UK’s floods.

Sky claimed that features, such as an interactive map, gave key regional information on the flooded areas. Sky News’ web visitors also sent in more than a thousand flood pictures for its online galleries helping – says Sky – to build up a detailed, interactive picture of the unfolding news event.

According to the Murdoch owned site the amount of time users spent on the site increased by 15%. In total there were 16.5 million visits to the site last month, up 85% from 8.9 million visits recorded in July 2006.

On Monday 23 July the site claims to have received 7.5 million page impressions; the highest figures since the 7/7 London Bombings two years ago – still the site’s highest figures with 35 million page impressions (126.6 million for July 2005).

The Sky.com portal is ABCe audited, however, the figures are not broken down to give specific results for its news portal.