malcolm coles

June 2009 saw the Mail Online unexpectedly overtake both the Guardian and Telegraph in the ABCes, partly on the back of US traffic and Michael Jackson stories.

Fast forward to September and the story is the same as earlier in the year – Guardian first, Telegraph second and Mail third. So what’s changed? To find out, I’ve compared the ABCe figures for UK and foreign visitors in June and in September. The difference between the Guardian’s performance and that of the Telegraph and Mail is revealing.

Instead of lambasting the BBC for the “chilling” effect of its online activities, and blaming the problems of online news sites on the BBC “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market”, News Corp chief James Murdoch should thank the BBC for all the traffic it sends his way.

The BBC is responsible for about 870,000 visitors a month to Times Online and 1.1 million to thesun.co.uk (see methodology, below).

By making use of ABCe data, we can check what Alexa says with the official audited data for UK newspapers. As the table shows, it’s OK but not brilliant.

Figures from Compete.com, which tracks American internet use, show that, of the 4.7 million unique users that the Mail added from May to June, 1.2 million were from the USA, and foreign searches for Michael Jackson’s kids also drove the Mail’s growth.

The ABCe website demonstrates the importance of returning a proper 404 status code, as this search at google for abce demonstrates.

In March, I appealed to the Audit Bureau of Circulations to sort out its terrible ABCe website. It’s had a redesign. Here’s a list of its latest problems.

For a body in charge of standards, the ABCe’s website is a disgrace and an embarrassment.