Northcliffe Media is celebrating record levels of traffic to its 50 local newspaper websites that operate under the 'this is' brand.

The network which includes thisishull, thisisnottingham, thisisleicestershire and thisisbristol has experienced 56 per cent growth in unique visitors year-on-year to 2,740,000 for January, with visits also up 56 per cent to 7,670,000 and page views up 43 per cent to 51,000,000 – the first time the 50m barrier has ever been broken in a single month by Northcliffe.

The strongest growth was seen in jobs and news/sport, with more than 8,400,000 pages of properties being viewed and more than 34,700,000 of editorial content.

Michael Pelosi, managing director of Northcliffe Media, said: "We believe the substantial and sustained increases in traffic to our network are the result of two factors - empowering our local centres to own and be responsible for internet publishing, just as they are with their print titles, and a marked increase in marketing activity via our newspapers, local outdoor advertising and of course online."

"Integrating digital publishing fully into the local centres has allowed our staff to turn their enthusiasm for the internet into reality and to allow them to publish both editorially and commercially to the most appropriate platform at the most appropriate time."