theguardian.com becomes world’s second most popular English-language newspaper website, with 42.6m uniques in September

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The Guardian has passed the New York Times to become the world’s second most popular English-language newspaper website, according to the latest monthly traffic figures from comScore.

Last month theguardian.com website network recorded 42.6 million worldwide unique visitors, a 12.3% month-on-month increase, according to the latest comScore report on desktop web usage. The New York Times drew 41.6 million worldwide unique visitors, up 8% month on month.

The Guardian ranks 5th biggest in comScore’s newspaper category, behind the Daily Mail’s Mail Online, which drew 55.8 million worldwide unique users last month.

The top three slots are taken by Chinese newspaper websites: Xinhua News Agency (90.2 million uniques), People’s Daily Online (89.1 million) and China Daily Sites (56.4 million).

Stripping out foreign-language publications to look at a comparison of the Guardian’s direct English-language competitors, including web-only news organisations, AOL-owned Huffington Post comes out on top with 68.5 million worldwide users.

It is followed by CNN (67.7 million) and then Mail Online third, the Guardian fourth and New York Times rounding out the top five.

The top 10 includes BBC News (at sixth biggest), the Telegraph (seventh), theWashington Post (eighth), the Wall Street Journal (ninth) and Independent.co.uk (10th).

ComScore’s figures record PC usage only – it does not have enough data to give a global figure for mobile usage – and only records the web activity of over-15s at home and work. Traffic from educational establishments and internet cafes is also excluded.

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