Telegraph repeats claim to be UK's biggest newspaper website

LONDON - The Daily Telegraph has boasted on its front page that Telegraph.co.uk is the biggest UK newspaper website according to the latest figures from Nielsen Net Ratings.



The data shows that during February, the Telegraph site attracted 4.4m unique users, compared with Guardian.co.uk's 3.9m and Timesonline.co.uk's 3.1m users, a month-on-month increase of 8%.
However, the most recent audited ABCe figures for January told a very different story -- the Guardian attracted 11,273,553 unique UK users, while the Telegraph trailed behind with 8,720,105 UK users.
Nielsen's figures are based on the responses of a 40,000-strong panel of internet users -- whereas ABCe data is based on actual traffic information from host sites, which is then verified by independent auditors.

Edward Roussel, the Telegraph's digital editor, said: "Telegraph.co.uk benefited from strong traffic across the website. Stories relating to the Oscars, Baftas and the impact of the cold weather fared particularly well."
In 2007 the Telegraph ran poster ads claiming to be the UK's number one website based on Hitwise figures, before the days of comprehensive ABCe audits for newspapers' online traffic.
The Guardian took exception to the claim, preferring to rely on ComScore figures that showed it had more than double the Telegraph's number of UK unique users.
One person complained to the Advertising Standards Authority but it sided with the Telegraph ruling that the Hitwise figures were a valid source for online usage in the absence of any audited figures.