Record Web Traffic Growth for Local Newspaper Websites

Traffic to Britain’s regional and local newspaper sites increased by 23.5 per cent over the past year, according to audited figures released this week. “The regional newspaper groups reporting their online activity are all showing healthy year on year increases, demonstrating that their products continue to be relevant and an important source of local news and information for millions of people across the country,” said Martyn Gates, ABC’s director of newspapers.

“This move complements a recently launched initiative by the Newspaper Society. Locally Connected allows regional publishers to provide detailed information about the combination of print and web readers for their titles. ABC data is used to underpin this initiative.”

The ABCe figures for regional newspapers showed strong growth for publishers such as Trinity Mirror whose network of sites was up 49 per cent year on year and which broke the 8,000,000 mark for monthly unique users across its network for the first time.

Georgina Harvey, Trinity Mirror Regionals managing director, said:“We are encouraged by these results as they show an improving trend for the majority of our daily and weekly titles, coupled with strong audience growth across our digital network. This is the result of our ongoing circulation development plan and numerous editorial enhancements. We remain focused on serving our advertisers by delivering valuable audiences across our print titles, companion websites and mobile platforms.”

Newsquest has grown its average monthly web traffic by nearly a third over the last year, increasing its reach by more than 1.7 million unique users a month, ABCe figures published this week show.

The July-December 2010 website audit reveals that an average of 7,450,271 unique browsers accessed Newsquest’s network of 158 local media websites each month compared to an average of 5,724,336 for the period July-December 2009.

Roger Green, managing director of Newsquest Digital Media, said: “In the seven years we’ve been publishing audited audience figures this 1.725m increase is yet another biggest-ever.”

Green added that in addition to the significant top-line growth visitor engagement was rising, with the number of repeat visitors up 23 per cent to 30.2 per cent.

He said: “The great news for advertisers is not only that we have increased engagement but we are offering a full range of demographic, contextual and behavioural tools that allow us to deliver the right commercial message to the right people at the right time.”

Johnston Press’ network hit 7,106,831 monthly unique browsers with sites such as Yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk up 45 per cent year on year. Kent Online was up 26.5 per cent to 292,216 monthly browsers, Northcliffe’s thisislincolnshire was up 46 per cent to 195,747, Midland News Association’s network jumped nearly 20 per cent to 838424 and Iliffe News and Media’s network was up 8 per cent to 597,874.