February ABCes: Mail Online stays top despite rare month-on-month dip

Mail Online saw its first month-on-month fall in traffic for more than a year in February, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The number of monthly unique browsers to the Daily Mail website dipped 9.08 per cent to 50,927,975, compared with 56,016,340 for the slightly longer month of January. The month-on-month fall was accompanied by a 1.4 per cent drop in daily unique browsers to an average of 3,143,141 for the month.

Despite the drop, Mail Online remains the UK's most popular newspaper website, with around 10 million more monthly visitors than it's nearest rival, Guardian.co.uk.

The Guardian site saw a slight month-on-month increase in traffic for February, up 1.25 per cent to 30,972,376 despite the shorter month, but still below the 40 million monthly unique user mark that it broke last November. The site recorded a 6.85 per cent increase in daily unique browsers to 2,302,300.

The Telegraph fared better with an increase in daily unique browsers of 7.88 per cent to 1,716,359, but still trails the Guardian.

The worst falls were recorded by Mirror Group Digital, which suffered a 9.02 per cent fall in daily unique browsers to 602,685 and a 15.48 per cent month-on-month drop to 12,896,957.

Despite publishing its first ever traffic figures in January, Metro – which debuted with 5.85 million monthly unique browsers – didn't report figures for February.

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