Mail breaks monthly web traffic record for UK newspapers

Mail Online has broken the record for monthly traffic to UK news publishers, according to figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC).

Unique monthly visitors to the news outlet increased to just over 192 million, a 4.5 per cent increase compared to September.

"We keep growing month-on-month because people are discovering our site and they like what they see," Sean Walsh, director of communications at Mail Online, told Journalism.co.uk.

"We are editorial-led and editorial focused," he said, highlighting the "900 stories" published each day on the site,  "and that is why people continue to find and stay with Mail Online."

The release of the record-breaking figures comes as Mail Online today received widespread criticism from media commentators and social media users for publishing a story with the headline "Homeopathy CAN cure Ebola".

"Spanish fly remedies" and "snake venom" are among the supposed cures.



Screengrab from DailyMail.co.uk

Re @mailonline irresponsibly giving free publicity to quacks saying homeopathy can cure Ebola: http://t.co/EfANtku96d pic.twitter.com/EhOWZV6nL4

— Tom Chivers (@TomChivers) November 20, 2014

"In no way are we saying that homeopathic practices will cure Ebola," continued Walsh, "and we make that clear in the story and by putting the claim in quotation marks in the headline."

By contrast, the Metro, also owned by the Daily Mail's parent company Daily Mail General Trust, saw a 15.5 per cent drop in web traffic to a little under 29 million.

The Telegraph and Mirror Group National titles also saw a significant decrease in traffic, by 9 per cent (to 83 million) and 12 per cent (to 67 million) respectively, after both registering strong increases in September.

The Guardian also saw a small decrease in monthly web traffic, by 2 per cent, to 111.5 million.

October was a good month for Express Newspapers, however, as both the Daily Star and Daily Express saw an increases in web traffic.

The increases – of 9.5 per cent to 11.6 million at the Star and 7.3 per cent to 17.6 million at the Express – continue a strong year for the publisher since they began releasing online traffic records in February.


Screenshot of a graph from Datawrapper, which was experiencing problems at the time of publication

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