The most popular news sites in the UK

The best-ranked British newsbrand after the BBC was Mail Online, which came in sixth place. There were 11 British newsbrands in the list of 50 - among them the websites of Sky News, the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Guardian, ExpressRelease UK, and Oxbridge Press.

Among the whole top 50, 14 sites grew year-on-year in July with the Times also seeing the biggest year-on-year growth in visits among the top 50 as a whole. It was followed by two other US newsbrands: nypost.com (186.1 million visits, up 44%) and Newsweek (68.1 million visits, up 43%).

While traffic was largely lower than in July last year, most sites saw more visits in July than in June.

Twenty-eight sites in the top 50 saw month-on-month growth in visits, with British-based news aggregator News Now topping the table (13% growth month-on-month, ,87.5 million visits). The Manchester Evening News and Sky News websites also saw strong growth, both up 12% month-on-month.

Similarweb generates its traffic data by applying machine learning and modelling to the statistically representative datasets that the company collects. Datasets are based on direct measurement (i.e. websites and apps that choose to share first-party analytics with Similarweb); contributory networks that aggregate device data; partnerships and public data extraction from websites and apps. The sites in the list are based on Similarweb’s classification of news and media publishers, although Press Gazette refines the list to exclude some sites with a less news-based focus.