Readership of online newspapers in Australia is surging while print editions are moving marginally up or down, according to The Age.

The most popular online news sites in the country are smh.com.au, ninemsn news and theage.com.au, which saw the average number of monthly unique browsers grow 66 percent, 21 percent and 56 percent, respectively, in the first quarter of this year compared with the same time in 2007, according to Nielsen NetRatings.

All but one of the top 50 news Web sites experienced growth in this period, The Age reported.

However, among the metropolitan dailies across weekday and weekend editions, 19 had circulation down in the first quarter year-on-year, two remained flat and 12 increased, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures.

The biggest circulation drop was 5.4 percent for the Saturday edition of The West Australian, from 367,899 to 348,153 copies.

The largest circulation gain was 11.6 percent for the weekend edition of The Australian Financial Review, from 91,528 to 102,114 copies.

The 1Q total newspaper sales declined by 1.1 percent, but readership of most newspapers increased, according to the figures from Roy Morgan Research.

The largest readership drop among metropolitan dailies was 10.2 percent for the weekend edition of The Australian Financial Review.

Of the top 50 newspaper Web sites, PerthNow and Newsphotos increased their readerships more than threefold, while eight reported more than double gains in their readership numbers, according to the article posted on Asia Media.