Northcliffe Media’s 50 local ‘Thisis’ newspaper websites have collectively grown their unique users by 56 per cent year-on-year.

According to internal data supplied by the group, its sites gleaned 2,740,000 uniques for January, with visits up 56 per cent to 7,670,000 and page views up 43 per cent to 51,000,000 – the first time the 50m barrier has ever been broken in a single month by Northcliffe, a company statement said.

Northcliffe’s parent company Daily Mail and General Trust revealed in a trading statement earlier this week that its regional news division had seen a 90 per cent increase in digital revenue during the final quarter of 2007.