The Guardian’s website, theguardian.com, recorded over 17m unique browsers - almost 3m unique browsers higher than its second largest day - and 77 million page views, as the fallout of this historic event was felt around the world, say the publishers.
Since the UK went to the polls on Thursday 23 June, theguardian.com has run over 550 pieces of coverage on the referendum garnering over 115 million page views in total. Downloads of the Guardian’s app over the 24 and 25 June were also up by 162% compared to the same time the previous week.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media said: “The last few days have been seismic and historic for Britain, the greatest political crisis since the second world war with reverberations felt around the world. In a time of anxiety and confusion people turned to the Guardian, in greater numbers, in greater depth, and for longer, than ever before. We’re proud to have been able to provide those readers with clear, well-sourced, calm and accessible journalism, and will continue to do so as we enter uncharted waters in the weeks and months ahead.”
The interactive results tracker - which enables readers to see how their area voted - was one of the most popular pieces with over 10 million page views to date. Other popular pieces included a live blog focusing on Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement that a Scottish independence poll was highly likely has reached 8 million page views. Video content also performed well with Meet the 75%: the young people who voted to remain in the EU - a video focusing on young people’s response to the results - securing over 11 million views and almost 150,000 shares on Facebook to date.
The traffic increases emphasised the advantages of the Guardian’s global newsroom with teams in the UK and Australia offices running a dedicated live blog, covering every moment as the Brexit vote was tallied.
According to the Guardian, print sales for both the Guardian and The Observer also increased significantly over the weekend. The Guardian sold 375,958 copies on Saturday - an increase of 77,395 on the week and 16,058 more than the Saturday following the general election. The Observer sold 242,294 copies on Sunday, increasing the week on week sale by 44,311 copies and improving on the general election by 27,413 copies.
