The Age rises at expense of Yahoo7 sites as smh.com.au closes gap on news.com.au
The Age moved up two places to become the sixth most popular news site in April as the BBC dropped out of the top 10 to be replaced by the Herald Sun.
The Fairfax masthead leapfrogged both The Guardian and Yahoo7 news websites which themselves swapped places with the UK publication now ahead of Yahoo7.
April unique audiences. (March position in brackets)
- (1) news.com.au – 3,906,000
- (2) smh.com.au – 3,889,000
- (3) ABC news sites – 3,007,000
- (5) ninemsn news sites – 2,745,000
- (4) Daily Mail Australia – 2,524,000
- (8) The Age – 2,280,000
- (7) Guardian – 2,079,000
- (6) Yahoo!7 news sites – 2,012,000
- (10) Daily Telegraph – 1,994,000
- (9) Herald Sun – 1,911,000
Source – Nielsen Online ratings
It was also a disappointing month for academic publisher The Conversation which saw more than a third of its audience vanish. The decline, of almost 200,000 to 335,000, comes a day ahead of the Federal budget where Government is expected to announce it will pull funding from the publication.
The Age saw its unique audience rise from 2.06m to 2.28m although the number of page views per person fell from 42 to 36.
Yahoo7 however attracted 2.01m users down 189,000 from the previous month. The Guardian also slipped from 2.15m to 2.07 but managed to hold on to 7th spot in light of Yahoo7’s heavier decline.
The BBC dropped out of the top 10 after losing 200,000 unique visitors in April to finish on 1.715m
The Herald Sun replaced the British broadcaster with a unique audience of 1.911m.
News.com.au maintained its top spot with its audience rising 56,000 t0 3.906m but the Sydney Morning Herald closed the gap with its unique readers rising 115,000 to 3.889m.
The ABC remained the third most popular news site despite a sharp fall of 347,000 to just over three million with Ninemsn following up March’ rise of 300,000 with another increase of more than 200,000 to 2.745m.
The Daily Mail remained largely steady with a unique audience of 2.524m, 15,000 more than the previous month.
After a big jump in March of 230,000, vital site BuzzFeed dropped 42,000 to 1.741m while the Huffington Post also slipped, falling 138,000 to 1.056m.
Steve Jones
(click to enlarge)
Clarification: The Conversation has subsequently contacted Mumbrella to say it is no longer participating in the Nielsen panel, and has disputed the above audience figures as significantly under-representing its audience.
