For the past three months, NML has been giving its "thisis" network of newspaper companion sites a radical overhaul, with the launch of a scores of "hyperlocal" sites for areas previously contained within larger portals.

Today sees the launch of the final 45 sites in the current wave, although more acould come on stream in the next six months including some in areas where Northcliffe currently has no newspaper presence.

Today's roll-out will mean that for the first time, Northcliffe now publishes more websites than newspapers.

The majority of the new additions to the network will be hyperlocal offerings under the umbrella of existing thisis sites.

Areas which will get their own local site for the first time include the Beeston, Hucknall, Sherwood and Long Eaton areas of Nottingham, previously served by the Nottingham Evening Post's thisisnottingham portal.

Northcliffe Media director of marketing, Sean Mahon, said: "If you rewind the clock to a few years ago, people would describe businesses like Northcliffe as primarily newspaper publishing businesses with a few websites. Now they'd describe us as a multimedia business.

"The whole thing for us now is looking at total audience across newspapers and websites and as part of that we're focusing on interaction. We have 200,000 interactions on our sites each month, be that voting, commenting or registering."

Sean added that there was also a "high probability" that the company would launch more thisis sites in the next six months, including sites in regions where the company does not have existing print products.

Last week, Northcliffe released audited traffic data for ten of the thisis sites, claiming they are growing by 45pc year on year.