ABC: Web traffic to Metro tops 32m in August

Metro has seen a year-on-year increase of more than 150 per cent in traffic to its website, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC).

ABC's latest multi-platform report, released today, showed the outlet's monthly unique browsers reached 32.7 million in August, compared to 12.7 million in the same month the previous year.

Metro's website has seen consistently strong growth since the launch of a responsive site and mobile-first strategy in December 2012.

In March plans were reported to fold the site, owned by Daily Mail & General Trust, into Mail Online, casting doubts over the future of the Metro print edition.

Still, despite year-on-year growth, Metro was among many other news outlets which remained more or less static or experienced a slight dip in traffic during August 2014 compared to July.

Mail Online, The Independent and Mirror Group all managed a slight (less than 4 per cent) elevation.

The Standard saw the biggest month-on-month increase at just over 10 per cent, up to 7.6 million unique browsers from 6.9 million.

The Daily Star also saw traffic up 5.4 per cent, from just over 10.9 million browsers to 11.6 million.

Monthly traffic to The Daily Star has steadily increased since it began including its figures in the ABC report in February this year, alongside its sister publication The Express.

Comparatively, August was the first month in which The Express did not record consistent growth, with traffic down to 15.4 million browsers from 16.6 million.

This 7.4 per cent decrease in traffic was the largest of the other outlets audited by ABC, who all experienced traffic decreases of between 0.6 per cent (Mirror Group) and 5.9 per cent (The Telegraph).

August is traditionally a quieter news month for many outlets as many organisations and government bodies shut up shop for the summer holidays.

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