Fairfax’s smh.com.au reclaims Nielsen online news rankings top spot
For the second time this year Fairfax’s smh.com.au has reclaimed the top spot in the Nielsen online news rankings, pushing News Corp’s news.com.au into second place.
The latest numbers revealed a 12 per cent increase in unique audience by smh.com.au in August 2014 compared to the month prior.
The top ten stayed relatively the same, with The Daily Telegraph falling out of the top ten, making room for the BBC, after posting a 3 per cent decline in unique audience from 1.6m to 1.55m.
Fellow News Corp websites The Herald Sun and The Courier Mail also posted declines, with the Herald Sun seeing its audience sink by 9 per cent to 1.7m from 1.9m in July.
However, it was a more positive story at The Australian which posted 11 per cent unique audience growth, boosting its numbers from 1.11m in July to 1.24m in August.
The Guardian had an Australia audience, across all its websites, of 1.95m up from 1.87m last month and ranking it in 7th place in the overall news rankings while fellow British news outlet the Daily Mail also saw an audience rise, up 20 2.454m from 2.357m.
ABC News Websites was ranked fourth, behind ninemsn which also posted a 4 per cent growth in unique audiences.
Viral content website Buzzfeed saw its visitors dip last month from 1.8m in July to 1.7m in August.
Meanwhile, The Conversation saw its audience climb slightly up from 315,000 in July to 320,000 last month.
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 only news masthead in the top ten now is The Hun – bad result.
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Still haven’t seen an explanation of why the Age online seemingly does so poorly relative to smh.com.au.
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KF: maybe because national audience goes to SMH.com.au, but only Vics go to THEAGE.com.au?
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@KF – I think smh.com.au has basically become the default go-to news website for people even outside of Sydney (& possibly internationally etc.)
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And all this despite Fred Hillmer’s best efforts.
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The Guardian needs to get a ‘.com.au’ address. They’ve missed a trick there, imo.
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Um, isn’t the News websites pay-sites whilst the Fairfax ones are still freebies? If the SMH etc were full pay-site methinks these numbers would be vastly different.
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Hi RassieRooster,
Both News Corp and Fairfax have similar metered paywall models where readers can access a certain amount of free articles a month before hitting the paywall (which are also fairly porous).
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
Is this ranking meaningful? It does not tell u how much if this audience is useful to advertisers. Do we know how much traffic is driven by the generic clickbait that catches anyone with an interest in soft porn or celeb goss? Do we know how much is attracted to the core Sydney news etc? Demographics?
It is not really an important measure for anyone outside the fairfax pr.
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Clumsy.
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How do you get that? When I go to Newscorp I just get the first paragraph. That’s why I go to smh – it’s free.
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@ Ian .. It depends how many stories you’ve read on each. They each have a limit on the number of free stories you can read one week or month. Keep clicking on smh stories – once you’ve hit the monthly limit (30 stories) , you will hit the paywall
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