The Daily Mail Becomes The Most Visited Newspaper Site In The UK

The Daily Mail’s Mail Online has become the most visited newspaper site in the UK, reports New Media Age.

With 36.2 million unique users in February, the news means that the Mail has overtaken previous champion, the Guardian. Although the Mail’s readership didn’t grow significantly last month, the figures from ABCE saw the Guardian fall a dramatic 14%.

The Mail’s success has been a long time coming; it has seen the best year-on-year growth of any UK newspaper site. This is likely to stem from the comparative ‘shareability’ of the Mail’s stories as opposed to the Guardian’s. The right-wing Mail’s headlines tend to be a lot more sensational, leading to people sharing links via Twitter, Facebook and email whether they agree with the article or not.

Last November’s Jan Moir article on Boyzone singer Stephen Gately’s death is a good case in point. Anger around the post grew to such a level that a jump in traffic for the site was inevitable. This applies more widely too – not a day goes by where a link to a Mail article isn’t doing the rounds on Twitter accompanied by comments like “OMG, can you believe what they’re saying?”

The large drop in Guardian traffic? That’s a little more difficult to fathom. If you have any ideas we’d love to hear them in our comments section below.