Telegraph.co.uk overtook guardian.co.uk to become the most popular UK national newspaper site in April, according to the most recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic, the Guardian reported Thursday.

The Telegraph Media Group, the online portal for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, which also carries original content, witnessed its unique user numbers increase 9.45 percent from March to 18,646,112 for April.

The figures from ABCe display that Telegraph.co.uk added over a million unique users in March and April. In February and March an additional five million unique users followed, the Guardian reported.

Guardian.co.uk experienced a month-on-month drop of around one percent within its unique users figures, to 18,546,017 in April, showing a year-on-year rise of 22.25 percent over April 2007.

Mail Online appeared to have another good month with 18,039,943 unique users in April, which increased less that one percent from March, but by 93 percent compared to April 2007.

Times Online increased 4.21 percent month-on-month to 15,406,254 unique users in April, similar to a 73 percent rise year-on-year.

Last month, the Sun Online had 14,068,523 unique users, up by about 2 percent from March and 71 percent from April 2007.

In April, Mirror Group Digital joined the monthly ABCe web traffic audit and observed 4,277,502 unique users, which was down three percent from March.

“March was a great month for us and April has been even better, with Telegraph.co.uk growing both month on month and more than doubling our unique users from last year," Mike Moore, general manager-digital of Telegraph Media group, told the Guardian.

Edward Roussel, TMG digital director, told the Guardian that the U.S. election campaigns and credit crunch were popular on the site in April, and that “our strategy of combining text with video is delivering excellent results.”

Figures from ABCe offer geographic traffic breakdowns showing that guardian.co.uk had the most unique users within the UK at 7,762,826 in April, making up 41.9 percent of its audience.

Telegraph.co.uk observed 6,327,348 unique users last month, 33.9 percent of its audience, whereas Times Online had 5,637,402, 36.6 percent from its general users throughout April.

Guardian.co.uk recorded 182,265,427 page impressions and Mail Online had 146,452,603.

ABCe audit shows for Telegraph.co.uk shows 135,273,024 page views for April, as opposed to Times Online had 109,286,293, the Guardian reported.