A two-thirds increase in readers saw Belfast daily The News Letter top the charts for year-on-year web growth in the latest ABC Figures.

The News Letter posted the largest increase in daily average unique browsers in the second half of 2016, compared with the same period the previous year.

The Johnston Press-owned title’s website recorded an average of 20,336 unique browsers each day, representing a 67pc rise.

Second and third position in the tables went to the Glasgow Evening Times, at 48.8pc, and the Birmingham Mail, at 41.1pc.

The Manchester Evening News recorded the highest number of readers overall, with 652,881 people visiting its site on the average day.

However, the figures also revealed declines in browsers at 14 different regional press sites which submitted figures – including the online portals of nine daily newspapers.

In terms of regional publishers overall, Trinity Mirror’s network of sites had the highest readership – with 3,474,605 daily average UB representing a 76.7pc increase year-on-year.

Independents the CN Group and KM Group came second and third for year-on-year increase, recording usage up by a quarter and a fifth respectively.

Toby Granville, Newsquest editorial development director, has welcomed his company’s performance.

He said: “It’s encouraging to see Newsquest’s local sites continuing to deliver strong overall audience growth, whilst we are also seeing strong growth in user engagement in both returning visitors and page impressions.

“Many of our sites now reach over 70pc of the adult population of their towns and cities at least once a month, giving our advertisers a phenomenally powerful local audience.”

The full list of audience figures for regional publisher online networks is as follows:

The full list of audience figures for individual newspaper online platforms is as follows: