Twitter and UK newspaper websites

Last week (w/e 14/03/09) Twitter.com was the 54th most visited website in the UK, up from 66th the week before. One consequence of Twitter rapid rise up the rankings is that the micro-blogging service has now overtaken most of the UK newspapers online. As the chart below illustrates, last week Twitter received more UK Internet visits than the homepages of the Guardian, Times, Sun and Telegraph. It also over took Google News UK. Of the main newspaper homepages, only the Daily Mail received more UK Internet visits than Twitter last week.

There are few caveats here, the first relating to how we categorize newspaper websites within Hitwise. Wherever possible we split out topic specific domains for the newspapers, particularly the broadsheets (e.g. Times Online - Business, Telegraph Sport, Technology Guardian, etc.). Consequently the traffic illustrated in the chart above refers only to the newspapers’ main homepages; although in every case these do receive the majority each title’s visits.

However, it is also important to point out that we are only measuring traffic to the Twitter homepage and not hits via third party applications such as Tweetdeck or Twitterrific. Given that some people claim that these exceed the direct hits via the website, it is also fair to say that actual Twitter usage is higher than our numbers imply. Therefore, even taking all of these caveats into accounts, the trend is clear: in the UK, Twitter now receives more UK Internet traffic than most of the main newspaper websites and is growing at a faster rate.

Although Twitter is a news source for many, it is also a source of traffic for news websites. During February, 9.6% of Twitter’s downstream traffic went to News and Media websites, and 41% of that went to the News and Media – Print sub-category, which is dominated by the newspaper sites. The chart below illustrates the top News and Media – Print websites to receive traffic from Twitter over the last year. As you can see, the Guardian currently receives more traffic than any of its competitors. And not only is its homepage the top recipient of Twitter traffic, but three of its sections (Technology, Comment is Free, and Media) also appear in the top 10.

So, Twitter is becoming a significant source of traffic for news sites, but how does it fare when compared with other news aggregator websites? As in the US, Twitter has already overtaken Digg in the UK and, as the chart below illustrates, is now a bigger source of traffic for News and Media – Print websites. However, despite having overtaken Google News UK in terms of Internet visits, Twitter still sends only a sixth as much traffic to Print websites. Twitter is also a smaller source of traffic than News Now, while Facebook sends over ten times as many visits to the category.