January ABCes: Metro debuts with 5.85m monthly unique users

Associated Newspapers' free UK newspaper Metro has reported a debut online traffic figure of 5.85 million monthly unique users.

According to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the site averaged 238,240 daily unique users in January, with a roughly 50:50 split between UK and overseas traffic.

Metro will not be publishing a regular monthly ABCe certificate but will report "on an ad-hoc basis", the ABC said.

All of the national newspaper websites included in the January report saw their traffic rise month on month after the traditionally slow month of December.

Mail Online stayed top with 56 million monthly unique users, up 3.84 per cent on the previous month. The site's figure for daily unique users stayed above the three million mark, up 4.69 per cent to 3.19 million.

The Guardian website saw monthly unique user figures rise three per cent on December to 39,586,711 - still below the 40 million monthly unique user mark that it broke last November.

Telegraph.co.uk reported a 5.1 per cent month-on-month rise in traffic to 32.68 million monthly unique users.

The fastest growth in percentage terms was at the bottom end of the national newspaper website league table, with the Mirror Group sites climbing 16.19 per cent in a month and Independent.co.uk reporting 9.32 per cent growth over the same period.

Results for the Times and the Sun websites continue to go unreported, as requested by News International following the introduction of a paywall for the Times and Sunday Times sites last year.

The full figures for audited websites are listed below. The percentage in brackets indicates the month-on-month change compared with December's ABCe report.

Mail Online
Average daily unique browsers: 3,187,658 (+4.69 per cent)
Monthly unique browsers: 56,016,340 (+3.84 per cent)

Guardian.co.uk
Average daily unique browsers: 2,302,300 (+3.04 per cent)
Monthly unique browsers: 39,586,711 (+1.33 per cent)

Telegraph.co.uk
Average daily unique browsers: 1,716,359 (+8.40 per cent)
Monthly unique browsers: 32,680,855 (+5.13 per cent)

Mirror Group
Average daily unique browsers: 602,685 (+19.59 per cent)
Monthly unique browsers: 12,896,957 (+16.19 per cent)

Independent.co.uk
Average daily unique browsers: 560,686 (+11.14 per cent)
Monthly unique browsers: 12,070,535 (+9.32 per cent)

Metro.co.uk
Average daily unique browsers: 238,240 (first time reporting)
Monthly unique browsers: 5,848,802

TheSun.co.uk
No data available

Times.co.uk
No data available

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