Guardian most popular UK newspaper site on Twitter

The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail have nabbed the top three spots in a new study to find the most popular UK newspaper websites on Twitter.

While the Daily Mail won the scoop for the most popular tweet in 2014, about a YouTube TV show that teaches dog-owners how to make homemade pet food (Tweeted 77,000 times), the Guardian won overall popularity.

The study by Searchmetrics, a global search experience optimisation platform, analysed the number of tweets per week generated by content on 11 leading UK newspaper websites using a continuously updated database of search and social network data.

The research reveals that the Guardian website drives an average 392,358 tweets per week, followed by The Daily Telegraph with 307,690 tweets per week and the Daily Mail (237,381 tweets per week).

Most Popular UK Newspaper Websites on Twitter:

1. The Guardian 392,358 tweets per week
2. The Daily Telegraph 307,690 tweets per week
3. Daily Mail 237,381 tweets per week
4. Independent 214,868 tweets per week
5. The Mirror 113,194 tweets per week
6. Financial Times 61,065 tweets per week
7. Daily Express 24,165 tweets per week
8. Daily Record 11,107 tweets per week
9. The Times 8,772 tweets per week
10. Daily Star 6,556 tweets per week
11. The Sun 3,531 tweets per week

Marcus Tober, CTO and founder of Searchmetrics, said: “Research indicates nearly three-fifths of Twitter’s 15 million UK users follow at least one national newspaper brand or journalist.

“Twitter is an ideal tool for driving additional traffic to news content and our research indicates that many leading newspaper sites are succeeding in this area.  Interestingly our list of the most tweeted stories indicates it’s not always the biggest and most high profile news stories that get the most tweets. Often it’s the quirkier stories or those with a human-interest angle that catch people’s imagination and go viral.”