News.com.au reclaims top place in rankings as SMH and The Guardian numbers fall off
News.com.au has reclaimed the top spot in the latest Nielsen online news rankings after being toppled by smh.com.au in the May standings, while the local operation of The Guardian saw its traffic drop by 5 per cent.
Nielsen Online Ratings sees news.com.au overtake smh.com.au by more than 200,000 readers. News.com.au has an estimated monthly audience of 3.7m readers while smh.com.au has an audience of 3.4m, down 9 per cent on May.
The latest standings also see another rise for the Daily Mail Australia, climbing to a unique audience of 2.334m, up 3 per cent, while The Guardian saw its traffic drop 5 per cent in June to 1.7m from 1.86m in May. Earlier this month, the parent company of The Guardian Australia narrowed its losses to $55.8m. It maintained its ninth place in the website rankings.
General manager of news.com.au Julian Delany said in a statement: “June is now our biggest month ever in terms of unique audience. While regaining the number one ranking in the news category is a great result for news.com.au, the levels of consumer engagement with our brand shows our audience is increasingly spending time with the site across a variety of stories.
“We are number one in the key verticals of entertainment, finance, technology and travel and sit at number two in lifestyle behind the powerhouse food site, taste.com.au. We also relaunched our m.site in late June to provide an evolved mobile news offering that is now more aligned with what consumers have asked from us as a news source.”
Nielsen gathers its numbers based on a combination of a representative panel of consumers and tracking codes on web sites.
The result for Daily Mail Australia also comes amid a growing fight with News Corp over copyright, with both sides throwing accusations of plagiarism and poorly attributed use of copy and images at each other.
Fairfax-owned The Age had a better month than its Sydney counterpart, boosting its traffic by 6 per cent with an audience of 2m.
While News Corp’s news.com.au and Herald Sun both saw month-on-month online increases in audience, the Daily Telegraph recorded a decrease. The Herald Sun was up 5 per cent to 2m while the Telegraph was down 3 per cent 1.61m.
Miranda Ward
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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The Guardian has a whopping great reserve and a mandate that iit can only be used on publishing the paper. In the long run they could easily end up being the winners.
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Possibly because now that Abbott is elected, news.com.au can revert to stories about celebrity wardrobe malfunctions. The Guardian hasn’t changed its main Aussie stories for months. Needs to update its interface.
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Meanwhile the latest EMMA metrics (which I don’t think Mumbrella reported) show the SMH has gained further ground as the most read publication in Oz
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So Australians would rather read celebrity drivel than leftie drivel?
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