According to Nielsen's panel-based research The Guardian garnered 3m unique users in the UK from home and work in April, with The Daily Telegraph's site just behind with 2.7m unique users. The results differ from research produced by ABCe last week, which puts The Guardian's April UK unique user base at 7.7m and The Daily Telegraph's at 6.3m.
Although The Sun was the third most-popular newspaper site in terms of unique users, with 1.9m, Nielsen said it is also the most engaging of the five leading newspapers' websites, having registered the highest percentage (14%) of visitors spending more than 15 minutes on the site during April. Meanwhile, The Times registered 1.8m unique users and the Daily Mail pulled in 1.7m users.
By contrast The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph attract the least amount of heavy users (6% and 7% respectively) with more than 80% of visitors to both sites spending less than five minutes online.
Publication of Nielsen's data follows the release of April ABCe data last week, which showed The Daily Telegraph posted a 153.4% year-on-year surge to overtake The Guardian as the UK's most popular newspaper website. Following publication of the ABCe data, the Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards, has decided to review current methods of measuring newspapers' online traffic.
According to Stephen Brooks, UK managing director of Nielsen Online, Nielsen's results highlight questions about reach versus engagement for newspaper publishers.
"Analysing the Telegraph's audience by heavy, medium and light visitors reveals their dramatic growth in popularity is concentrated around light users, which could be due to the site's improved visibility in search results.
"The Times, on the other hand, has experienced much less growth but this growth is mostly focused around heavy visitors. Is the best path to financial success attracting the most visitors or having a smaller core or more engaged users?"
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