ABC: Telegraph passes 100m in monthly web traffic

The Telegraph passed the 100 million mark for the first time last month, reaching 104 million unique monthly visitors in May, according to the latest figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulation today.

The publication also saw an increase of 22.5 per cent in daily average unique browsers, from just over 4 milion in April to 4.9 million in May.

"May was obviously a newsy month and the three big events for us were the General Election, the birth of Princess Charlotte and the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight in the beginning of the month," said Malcolm Coles, digital editor of The Telegraph.

He said the events played out differently in terms of traffic and the publication got a "huge" global audience for the boxing match and a great number of UK visitors coming to the website to catch up on election coverage.

Coles pointed out that a significant amount of people visited The Telegraph on election day by "turning up" to the homepage from search engines.

"A lot of people say that the homepage is dead for news websites, but events like these showed it's not."

The Guardian's average number of daily visitors went up by 4.17 per cent, reaching 7.5 million after last month's slight drop in traffic and a record 129.34 million monthly visitors.



Tanya Cordrey, chief digital officer at Guardian News and Media said in a release that the publication's record traffic was due to "sharp election reporting and intelligent analysis" and the Guardian saw a "strong surge in traffic" for its live blog of the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight.

The Independent also reported a record of average daily visitors, with 2.6 million, up from 1.6 million the previous year and increasing by 13.1% since April.

The newspaper also established its highest monthly figure ever, totalling 54.48 million unique visitors, as election coverage also played an important role. 

"We tried to offer a new voice in political reporting – and it worked," said digital editor Christian Broughton in a release.

Mirror Group Nationals had its second best digital performance last month, reaching 4.3 million daily unique visitors and 80.14 million monthly unique browsers.





Editorial director of Mirror Online Pete Picton said the significant traffic rises to the website during the birth of the royal baby and the General Election "exceeded our expectations" and that video was "crucial to the success of the coverage", in a release accompanying the figures.

The Daily Express averaged 839,410 daily unique visitors in May, a 7.4 per cent increase since last month and it also broke its monthly record with 18.7 million unique browsers.

Elsewhere, MailOnline saw a small increase of 1.27 per cent in average daily traffic, after it fell last month, even though its website was the most visited in the UK during April.

The Daily Star's daily unique visitors increased by 14.12 per cent since April, to 580,168. Metro, which last month reported its highest growth in daily traffic, saw a 11.16 increase on its website in May, but totalled 28.58 million unique browsers for the month.

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