Australian news websites receive record traffic during Victoria bushfires

Online news ... a screenshot of news.com.au's coverage of the Victoria bushfires on February 10 /

Online news ... a screenshot of news.com.au's coverage of the Victoria bushfires on February 10 /

AUSTRALIAN news websites recorded more than one billion hits in February as the nation went online for the latest on the Victorian fires.

Australians clicked 1,029,287,384 times on articles, pictures, videos and multimedia published on the country’s 100 or so news websites, tracked by the industry’s standard measurement service Nielsen NetRatings.

The figures were up from 855,584,678 in January and almost double the number of hits recorded this time last year.

Some 19 million Australians visited local news websites in February, according to Nielsen’s “unique browser” figures, the nearest thing to unique visitors.

Victorian websites were inundated with people seeking up-to-date information on the bushfires, which killed at least 210 people and destroyed more than 2000 homes.

Melbourne’s heraldsun.com.au recorded the biggest jump, adding 800,000 visitors in February, a 44 per cent rise to 2.6 million. The Age website rose 16 per cent to 3.3 million.

Ninemsn (5.5 million, up 4.7 per cent) and The Sydney Morning Herald (4.5 million, up 7.3 per cent) retained the number one and two positions.

News.com.au beat The Age into third position for the 10th straight month, with a record 3.7 million visitors, up 13 per cent.

The ABC, Yahoo7 and Google News websites do not subscribe to the Nielsen service.