Daily Mail making run at NY Times Web crown

The New York Times has long been the most-visited newspaper site on the Web, but Britain's Daily Mail is making a run at its crown.

According to figures from tracking firm comScore, the Mail Online surpassed the Times in unique visitors in December -- 45.35 million for the Mail to 44.8 million for the Times.

Not so fast, said the Times.

It noted that the Mail figure includes visitors not only to the newspaper site -- dailymail.co.uk -- but also to those of an affiliated personal finance site -- thisismoney.co.uk.

ComScore said dailymail.co.uk attracted 44.5 million unique visitors in December -- slightly less than the Times's 44.8 million.

Thisismoney.co.uk drew 1.03 million.

"The New York Times remains the number one individual newspaper site worldwide," Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said.

"In any case, a quick review of our site versus the Daily Mail should indicate quite clearly that they are not in our competitive set," she said.

Rounding out comScore's top five list of most-visited newspaper websites were USA Today with 37.17 million unique visitors in December, Tribune Newspapers with 32.83 million and Britain's Guardian with 29.15 million.

In an interview with Buzzfeed, Martin Clarke, the editor of the Mail's online properties, said growth of the site has been driven by US traffic.

"We just do news that people want to read," in an "entertaining, engaging way," Clarke said.