Google-Hating Newspaper Second Most Popular Online

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Maybe AOL bought the wrong media company. According to comScore, MailOnline, the online version of reactionary British newspaper the Daily Mail, saw a massive 27% increase in traffic from February to March this year to become the world’s second largest newspaper site – beating the Huffington Post, which also saw a large 20% spike that same month, by almost one million visitors.

For March, MailOnline jumped to 39,635,000 unique visitors, with HuffPo managing to score 38,429,000. Both sites, however, are dwarfed by the New York Times, which also saw an amazingly high jump in readership last month despite the much-discussed paywall being launched – the NYT site had a record 61,964,000 unique visitors for March, up an incredible 41% on February’s numbers.

Clearly, the various tragic (Japanese earthquake and tsunami) and political (revolution in the Middle East, a no-fly-zone being established in Libya) events in March drove users to news sites to keep up with the latest developments. It’ll be interesting to see how many of these new record numbers fall dramatically once April’s results are in.

More on TIME.com:

Google Is a Parasite Destroying Art, Claims Insane British Journalist

AOL, Huff Post Sued For $105 Million By Ex-Blogger

NYT: Breaking Paywall? Fine. Using Trademark? Meet Our Lawyer