Guardian leads the way with UK record online

Guardian News & Media's website network, which includes content from the Observer and MediaGuardian.co.uk, remains the most visited UK newspaper website despite a near 4% monthly fall to 31,693,844 unique users, in October ABCe’s published today.

Emily Bell, director of Digital Content at Guardian News and Media, called breaking the 30 million barrier for the second consecutive month "a great achievement" and also hailed a record breaking 13,290,715 users in the UK.

Bell highlighted the publisher’s Trafigura story and Charlie Brooker's column responding to Jan Moir’s comments around the death of Stephen Gately as examples of how news stories "can grow and propagate" online.

The combined use of traditional news services with social networking channels like Twitter and Facebook were recognised as driving steady streams of traffic to the site.

The Telegraph and Daily Mail websites also broke the 30 million barrier for the second consecutive month, with figures of 31,016,789 and 30,042,463 respectively.

A strong monthly increase of 12.8% for News International’s quality newspaper site Times Online saw it leapfrog its tabloid Sun stablemate with 20,872,089 unique users.

Sun Online, which includes News of the World content and page3.com, was down 9.4% on September to 20,839,831.

Mirror Group Digital's network of sites, which includes Mirror.co.uk, recorded 10,146,434 unique users last month, up 13.6% on September.

October was also a strong month for Independent.co.uk, with its highest figure yet of 9,703,508 unique users after a 10.4% rise month on month.