Almost every regional newspaper website in the UK recorded increases in online readership during the final six months of 2012, according to the latest report.

The ABC multi-platform figures, or ABCes, show that daily visitor figures dropped at just seven websites run by media companies, including two sites dedicated to jobhunters.

Across the networks, Iliffe News & Media – now part of Local World – recorded the biggest overall increase with 24.3pc more people and a daily average of 55,884 unique browsers logging on to read the headlines.

The Midland News Association, which publishes the Express & Star and the Shropshire Star and their associated websites, were a close second with an increase of 23.7pc, followed by Northcliffe whose network of thisis websites attracted 23pc more readers than the same period in 2011.

Northcliffe-run thisissouthwales.co.uk recorded the biggest increase in daily unique browsers of all the sites, with a boost of 53.1pc.

The Trinity Mirror Regional network saw the lowest increase at just 13.9pc.

Johnston Press maintained its position as most-visited overall with 555,584 unique browsers logging on each day, with a 22.8pc increase on the same period last year.

Johnston Press’s director of digital platforms, Alex Gubbay, welcomed the figures.

“We are very pleased to still be the biggest, and have had very strong year-on-year growth,” he said.

“Combined with the very encouraging internal figures we have for January, we feel like our website portfolio is in good shape ahead of the planned relaunch of all our local news sites over the coming months.”

Among the seven websites to report a drop in visitor numbers were two job sites – Iliffe’s Jobs Now and Johnston Press-run site jobstoday.co.uk.

Jobs Now fell 1.5pc, while jobstoday.co.uk dropped by 14.6pc to 32,484 daily unique browsers.

Other websites to see a fall in traffic included the Coventry Telegraph’s site, coventrytelegraph.net, yorkshirepost.co.uk and blackpoolgazette.co.uk.

Newsquest-run eveningtimes.co.uk, the website for the Glasgow daily The Evening Times, recorded the biggest drop in daily unique browsers, down 33.6pc to 14,085.

The full list is as follows: