This is a cross-post from Malcolm Coles’ personal website. You can read other posts by Coles on the Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog at this link.
The latest figures for UK users from the audited ABCes together with Compete‘s figures for American site usage show how USA traffic is vital for UK newspaper sites.
On average, US traffic is 36.8 per cent of the UK traffic (i.e. there is just over one US visitor for every 3 UK visitors). The figure for the Telegraph is slightly higher (44.5 per cent) and for the Mail it’s a massive 62.5 per cent.
| Newspaper site |
USA visitors (Compete) |
UK visitors (ABCe) |
US users as % of UK |
| Daily Mail | 5,199,078 | 8,316,083 | 62.5 |
| Telegraph | 4,087,769 | 9,184,082 | 44.5 |
| Times Online | 2,805,815 | 7,668,637 | 36.6 |
| Guardian | 3,676,498 | 10,211,385 | 36.0 |
| Independent | 1,317,298 | 3,781,320 | 34.8 |
| The Sun | 2,419,319 | 8,704,036 | 27.8 |
| Mirror | 748,098 | 4,907,540 | 15.2 |
| FT.com | 5,960,589 | n/a | n/a |
| Express | 63,216 | n/a | n/a |
| Average | 2,919,742 | 7,539,012 | 36.8 |
These figures are all for June 2009. The FT wasn’t audited in June’s ABCes. The Express isn’t in the ABCes.
They are further proof that the Mail’s success in the June ABCes was driven by American searches for Michael Jackson’s kids.