Guardian website reports record 69m browsers in Feb

The Guardian website has reported record traffic for February with an unaudited total browser figure of more than 69 million, while Audit Bureau of Circulation results show the number of average daily browsers on the site rose beyond the four million mark. Figures released by ABC today show the Guardian's website saw a 12.67 per cent rise in average daily browsers. The Guardian only releases audited figures for total monthly browsers every other month, but unaudited figures are said to show the site recorded a 9.9 per cent increase in unique browsers from January to 69,448,446. In today's ABC results every audited newspaper site apart from the Sun recorded a month-on-month decline in total unique browsers for February, with the biggest drop, of 31.29 per cent, recorded by Mirror Group Digital. This came in the same month the Mirror site was relaunched, with the company understood to have expected a drop and confident traffic from Google will return. The Sun's website recorded a rise in total monthly traffic of 2.29 per cent and in its average daily traffic figure of 6.3 per cent, but the biggest increase was recorded by the Guardian of 12.67 per cent. According to today's ABC multi-platform report, Metro's website saw the second biggest fall in total monthly traffic month-on-month, of 13.02 per cent, followed by the Evening Standard's website with a 12.17 drop. The Mail Online, which was awarded Website of the Year at the Press Awards this week, saw both its average daily browsers and total monthly traffic figure fall month-on-month by 0.67 and 8.13 per cent respectively. In a release the Guardian also reported record figures for its mobile sites with 640,220 average daily unique browsers, said to be a 28 per cent rise on January and an 182.4 per cent year-on-year increase.