Lewis, who was appointed as editor of the last month, claims in today's Press Gazette that according to Hitwise figures, its website has more unique UK users than any other UK newspaper in the second and third quarters of 2006.
A spokesperson for has challenged Lewis's claims, pointing out that the Hitwise figures were "taken out of context", and do not refer specifically to unique UK users.
The Telegraph's claims follow the completion of its multimillion-pound move to hi-tech headquarters in London's Victoria, and a significant investment in integrating its online and print editions.
Emily Bell, The Guardian's director of digital, said: "Web statistics are probably not as robust as they could be, there are many different measures.
"By the most widely accepted measures, The Telegraph are still some way behind us, as is The Times."
According to September's Hitwise figures, The Telegraph Online has a 4.99% market share of website visitors in the UK, followed by with 4.45% and The Guardian Unlimited on 4.35%.
Individual titles often quote different sources when referring to online statistics, further clouding the issue. The Times Online uses Hitbox to measure web development, but The Guardian Unlimited favours ComScore.
According to The Guardian Unlimited's ComScore figures for September, the website had 2.93m unique users compared with 1.22m for The Telegraph Online.
In its most recent ABCe figures, which are seen as the industry benchmark, Guardian Unlimited posted page impressions for the month of 129,849,497 and unique users numbers of 12,744,399. The Guardian's rivals were a long way behind.
The Telegraph posted for August an ABCe of 64,172,626 page impressions and 5,941,912 unique users and Times Online in September reported an ABCe of 61,564,119 page impressions and 9,011,794 unique users. However, the figures do not distinguish between UK and overseas visitors.
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