Mail Online remained the most visited national newspaper website in July for the seventh month in succession as its lead at the top of the pile increased yet again.

Figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations reveal that Daily Mail & General Trust's website drew an average of 2,494,916 daily browsers last month.

The website's audience increased 0.38 per cent from the 2,485,431 that visited the site on average each day in June and was up 43.98 per cent year-on-year.

Mail Online has been the most popular national newspaper website since monthly web traffic figures provided by the ABC changed in January to emphasise daily browser averages. The previous system focused on total monthly unique users.

In addition to having the highest number of daily users, Mail Online drew a new record total number of global browsers across the month with 44.2m.

It was also the only national newspaper website to increase its number of average daily visitors month-on-month in July.

The website of The Guardian remained in second place as it drew an average of 1,933,704 browsers each day last month, a fall of 5.05 per cent month-on-month but still up 30.14 per cent year-on-year.

The Daily Telegraph's website was also down on June's high as it drew an average of 1,623,290 visitors each day in July. However, it was up 22.08 per cent year-on-year.

The website of the Independent drew 471,917 daily browsers last month, down 4.15 per cent on its June figure, but up 22.21 per cent on its daily average in July, 2009.

Mirror Group Digital also recorded a month-on-month fall in the number of average daily browsers visiting its websites last month to 513,944 - a drop of 2.58 per cent from June but up 3.66 per cent year on year.

News International's websites for The Times and The Sun dropped out of the monthly web audit in May in preparation for the move to paid-for online access which was implemented last month

Oliver Luft writes for the Press Gazette [2]