UK local news websites see audience bounceback (2024)

Press Gazette’s updated ranking of the biggest local news websites in the UK shows that most titles grew their audience in July 2024 versus the same month a year earlier.

When Press Gazette last ranked UK local news websites using Ipsos iris data just under a year ago, we found most titles were losing traffic year on year. Many local news websites have felt the impact of declining Facebook referral traffic and changes to Google’s search algorithm.

But looking at the 78 local news websites that made it into the top 2,100 UK websites list shared by Ipsos iris for July, 57 titles grew their monthly UK audience year on year last month.

On average, the 78 sites grew their monthly UK audience by 33% and grew their total monthly audience minutes by 12%.

This compares with an average rate of print circulation decline of 17% in the first half of 2024 for the 53 daily UK titles audited by ABC.

The Manchester Evening News is the largest local news website in the UK with a monthly audience of over 12 million (up 9% year on year). Its daily print circulation is 6,519 (down 22% year on year).

Nine out of the ten most popular regional press websites in the UK are published by Reach (with the third-placed Evening Standard the only exception).

The top UK local news websites have audiences multiple times bigger than the populations of the areas they cover, with many attracting readers nationally and even internationally – sometimes helped by coverage of massive football teams.

Overall 34 out of the UK's top 78 regional sites are published by Reach, with 18 published by Newsquest and a further 18 published by National World.

The only other publishers to feature in the top 78 local news websites which Ipsos iris releases data for are Iliffe Media (two titles), DC Thomson (two), City AM and Evening Standard Ltd.

Some 44 local news sites audited by Ipsos iris grew their monthly audience by more than 10% year on year.

Reach-owned Gloucestershire Live was the best-performing site, growing its monthly audience by 302% to just over four million year on year and total audience minutes by 20% to 5.5 million.

Six out of the ten fastest-growing sites were published by Newsquest: The Daily Echo in Southampton, Oxford Mail, Bournemouth Echo, Brighton Argus, Dorset Echo and Glasgow Times.

However 16 local news websites in our top-78 list lost more than 10% of their monthly audience year on year.

Seven out of the ten local news websites audited by Ipsos iris which fell fastest were published by Reach.

Newsquest's Northern Echo was the fastest faller, down 56% year on year in terms of monthly audience. But it saw a slight increase in total audience minutes by 4% to 2.9 million per month suggesting it has one of the most deeply engaged audiences among all the leading UK local news websites.

Newsquest was best performer out of big three UK regional press publishers

Despite dominating the sector in terms of overall audience, in relative terms Reach was the worst performing out of the big three UK regional news publishers.

Reach reported an average year-on-year decline in monthly audience minutes of 45% despite average growth of 13% in total monthly audience at its sites, suggesting a fall in engagement across the board for its brands in July 2024.

Newsquest was the best-performing big-three publisher with average monthly audience growth of 60% and audience minutes up 44% on average across the sites we have data for.

National World saw average audience growth of just over 9% with minutes up 42% on average.

Methodology

Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage.

This data is combined with data from participating websites that are tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.

Publishers often have their own internal audience metrics, which can result in different figures. Press Gazette uses Ipsos for its UK news audience ranking stories to be able to compare across publishers.

For this story, 78 local news websites were isolated by Press Gazette from a list shared by Ipsos iris of the top 2,100 online brands in the UK in July 2024.

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