We’ve often written about how UK newspaper sites get a healthy number of visitors from the US, mainly via Drudge Report referrals (see Neil Thurman’s academic study). Now web measurer Hitwise says traffic to Brit news sites from across the pond is growing nearly seven times as fast as that domestically.
Analyst Robin Goad says Drudge is still the biggest aggregation referrer to UK news sites (bringing 10.6 percent of visits in August), followed by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) News (5.3 percent). But Google search is still the big traffic giver (13.5 percent); email’s a big referrer, too.
The question is, to what extent can newspapers profit from their increased audience? Most have now begun trying to sell ads to overseas eyeballs, but there are few signs of sucess yet.
Goad’s breakdown of our most popular news sites in the US may surprise some: “BBC News ranked as the 21st most visited News and Media website in US during August, while the Daily Mail (LSE: DMGT) was 47th and the BBC Homepage 65th. Other British sites in the US News and Media top 200 last month included: the Telegraph (71st), the FT (115th), The Sun (117th), Times Online (131st) and the Guardian (134th).”
More in Hitwise’s webinar presentation with BBC future media and technology’s journalism controller Nic Newman.