Dubai: Gulf News, which has been creating a silent revolution online by expanding its reach amongst an increasing global online readership, has justifiably been named the top English newspaper online at the Forbes Middle East’s Top Media Online in the Arab World awards ceremony held at the Meydan Hotel on Wednesday.
In the overall ranking, Gulf News jumped its position from 12th to 3 this year, while taking the top slot amongst the English media in the Middle East. The survey was based on a specific calculation of the online 2011 statistics.
Egypt’s Al Ahram has been named the most popular news media in the Middle East. “Gulf News has made a tremendous leap from last year’s ranking,” Forbes Middle East said in a statement.
“Gulf News’ online presence, which launched in 1996, has since evolved into a full news portal featuring a host of multimedia to share news. Over the research period, approximately 77.11 million visits were recorded for the webpage, including 20.34 million that were unique,” it said.
Among the UAE media, Al Bayan and Emarat Al Youm also made it to the Forbes’ top ten list while The National and Khaleej Times were ranked 15 and 16 respectably.
Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Editor-in-Chief of Gulf News, who has been featured on the cover of Forbes Middle East’s December-January issue, said, “The core philosophy of Gulf News is innovation and evolution, We have always pushed the benchmark when it comes to content, design and delivery, becoming the market leader that sets the trend.”
During the last few months, Gulf News has introduced a daily morning online newscast that gives an overview of the top news items — that are becoming popular among Gulf News’ online readers.
“It is not cost efficient for any paper to distribute globally in terms of logistics. The movement of news is no longer linear, as in the past. It is more layered, transparent, urgent and a bigger team effort,” Ahmad says.
During the last 31 days, www.gulfnews.com was visited by 7.2 million people including 2.31 million unique visitors with 32.5 million page views – averaging more than a million page views per day. According to Google Analytica, average visit duration per visit is about 11:10 minutes while on an average people read more than 4.51 pages per visit.
Gulf News website’s unique visitor statistics increased by 27.76 per cent in a year, while average page views jumped by 167.72 per cent.
“Gulf News traffic has increased significantly over the last 12 month, with increases coming from across the region. While the UAE remains the dominant source of traffic to the site, increasingly Gulf News is being accessed from across the region as the go to source for people who want to know what’s happening across the Gulf,” David Westley, Gulf News Portal Manager, says.
“Our GCC traffic is growing faster than specifically UAE traffic – Saudi Arabia, for example, is up almost 35 per cent. In the last 12 months traffic has also increased from outside the region,” he said.
“That is undoubtedly in part due to the Middle East moving to the centre stage in terms of the news agenda, but it’s also a result of efforts to make the paper the go to authority for the region, from outside of it. Traffic from the US and UK, for example, is up almost a third, traffic from India up 12 per cent,” Westley says.
Readers’ habits are also changing, Westley says.
“Finally, how people are accessing content on GulfNews is changing. The desktop still dominates, but increasingly the site is being accessed from a myriad of devices – tablets (specifically the iPad), but faster and stronger growth is coming from mobile,” he added. “If the rate of growth is maintained it won’t be many years before as many people access GulfNews.com from their phone, as they do from their desk.”
Khuloud Al Omian, Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Middle East, said, “In today’s world, societies are no longer passive recipients but makers of news, with a new world of debate, opinion and information opening up at the touch of a button.
“The power of the media is immense, not only in disseminating information and fostering dialogue, but in organising and rallying people around a common goal. Egypt is a testament to this fact,” Al Omian said.
