Times of Malta has been ranked among the world’s top 3,500 websites by a global metric used to compare websites’ popularity.
The Alexa Rank placement caps what has been a record-breaking year for Times of Malta and further entrenches its position as Malta’s number one website.
Times of Malta places 3,260 worldwide on Alexa Rank’s global scoreboard, which looks at how many people visit a website and how long they spend browsing it over the previous three months to rank websites across the internet.
Compiled by Amazon subsidiary Alexa, the global scoreboard is used frequently by webmasters to assess websites’ performances and track their progress against competitors.
According to the scoreboard, Times of Malta’s closest local competitor is national broadcaster TVM, which ranks 7,730 worldwide. Lovin Malta, Newsbook and Malta Today follow.
Times of Malta’s strong showing comes on the back of a record-breaking year for the news site, which receives an average of 125,000 unique visitors every day and has seen traffic volumes rise by roughly 50 per cent over the past 12 months.
“It has been a challenging year on many fronts, but a rewarding one too,” said online editor Bertrand Borg.
To see those efforts resonate with readers is gratifying
“We have worked hard to break some of the country’s most important news stories, provide in-depth coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and deliver Malta’s most accurate live blogs of key events, so to see those efforts resonate with readers is gratifying.”
Borg said the editorial team now intended to build on 2020’s successes by upping the quality of Times of Malta’s video content, doing better at explaining complex data through visualisations and offering subscribers a new and vastly improved daily e-paper service.
“Our primary focus will remain the same as it has been for the past 85 years, however: to keep Malta informed with the country's most timely, relevant and credible news.”
Times of Malta editor-in-chief Herman Grech added: "At the beginning of 2020, we decided to put our focus on a digital-first strategy, but nothing could prepare us for a pandemic, which forced us to work in the most challenging situations. Luckily we were powered by an army of loyal readers who have stood by us in what has been an extraordinary year for news.
"We have more readers than ever before in our 85-year history and that is only because our focus remains on delivering the most credible news in Malta."