The Gulf Daily News (GDN) website has been ranked the most popular news website in Bahrain, according to data from leading Internet data analysis company SimilarWeb.

It is ranked 26th among the 50 most visited sites in Bahrain, topping all other Bahraini newspaper websites in both Arabic and English, the GDN said in a report.

Between mid-September 2014 and mid-February 2015 the website had an estimated 350,000 visits, with each visitor spending an average of 40 minutes on the site - reading an average of six pages per visit.

The newspaper's international reach is evidenced by the fact that during the past three months, 55.97 per cent of the website's visitors were in Bahrain, while 9.34 per cent were in the US, 9.01 per cent were in the UK, 4.77 per cent were in the UAE and 4.32 per cent were in India.

The 'bounce rate', which is the average number of people navigating away from the website after reading the first page, was just 29.25 per cent.

The most visited website in Bahrain is google.com.bh, followed by google.com, Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo.

Arabic daily Al Wasat was ranked 29th with an estimated 450,000 visits, although visitors read an average of four pages per visit and spent around five minutes on the site.

The statistics have been revealed as the GDN prepares to launch a new and improved version of its website soon.

“Despite not getting the highest number of visits, we were ranked highest among local newspapers because on average people spend 40 minutes reading our news and on each visit they read around six pages,” explained GDN online editor Sonorita Mehta.

“English speakers in Bahrain are fewer than Arabic speakers so the traffic is slightly higher for Arabic dailies, but spending this amount of time means people enter our website to read most of the details.

“This shows how popular our website already is, keeping in mind that the time spent on the websites of the best international newspapers is close to just 10 minutes, meaning people spend four times longer on the GDN site.

“A low bounce rate, the people navigating away from the website after reading the first page, is a clear indication that people don't go to the website by mistake, but to read it carefully.

“We will be launching a new live world class website soon. Our website is already one of the best in the country, but we want to push the boundaries to a new level.

“Readers will have space to interact and will find it easier to navigate. It will also be more colourful and the user experience will be very rich.

“Launching the website is going to be an exciting phase because we are offering something different to people who love the GDN.” - TradeArabia News Service