Local newspapers in the United Kingdom are pushing to publish industry-wide Web site traffic numbers, launching a new tool Tuesday which will detail readership across platforms and help advertisers plan and target local advertising.

Although traffic data from 800 of the 1,100 local newspaper Web sites in the UK on the Newspaper Society's Media Portfolio Database will initially come from publishers, the tool has been developed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic, the official industry auditor. Many of these papers will be auditing online users for the first time.

The database enables users to search by publisher, title, format and postcode, MediaGuardian reported. Figures audited by ABCe will be available in the future, as well as additional user numbers from multimedia features, such as video.

Previously, only four local UK newspapers have made their ABCe-audited web traffic data public.

Research company Telmar has been commissioned by the Newspaper Society to try and find a way to report one reader figure across platforms.

Because print and online are measured much differently, the system to combine print and online readership would need to be “underpinned by audited data,” a Newspaper Society spokeswoman told MediaGuardian. “The database is very much a 'work in progress' which is still being populated by local publishers.”