Online News Portal Readers in Poland. Loyalty Analysis

Of the 20 most popular websites in Poland, five are “horizontal” portals, covering a broad range of topics. According to the December 2017 Gemius/PBI survey, Onet had the highest number of users among these five. However, as estimated by SimilarWeb, Wirtualna Polska recorded the most visits. These results pertain to main domains and exclude other websites owned by individual publishers.

• Onet.pl - 17,322,160 users, 321.33 million visits (email traffic share: 11.6%)
• WP.pl - 14,802,675 users, 321.93 million visits (email traffic share: 18.3%)
• Interia.pl - 13,242,657 users, 174.09 million visits (email traffic share: 12.6%)
• Gazeta.pl - 9,525,665 users, 99.47 million visits (email traffic share: 3.9%)
• O2.pl - 6,522,097 users, 82.85 million visits (email traffic share: 49.24%)

These data indicate that Onet has the most readers, while Wirtualna Polska’s audience is the most engaged. Notably, each of these top horizontal portals offers email services, which generate significant traffic. For O2.pl, email traffic constitutes nearly half. If email users were excluded from reader counts, Onet would surpass Wirtualna Polska in content engagement, and O2 would lose its fifth place to TVN24.pl (62.53 million visits and no email service).

Reader Loyalty of News Portals

Interesting insights also come from comparing SimilarWeb data on the traffic structure of each portal. Although this data covers only desktop traffic, it provides a glimpse into reader loyalty, measured by the share of direct traffic (e.g., visits from bookmarks or manually typed URLs).

Wirtualna Polska leads in this metric, with over 70% of traffic coming from direct visits. Gazeta takes second place, while Onet drops from the top three.

source: Reporterzy.info based on SimilarWeb data for December 2017

What if we exclude direct visits generated by each portal’s email services? If we consider this to reflect true reader loyalty - meaning visits for information alone - the rankings change significantly.

Reader Loyalty by Excluding Email-Generated Traffic

• Gazeta - 64.0%
• Onet - 39.8%
• Interia - 38.0%
• Wirtualna Polska - 27.6%
• O2 - 5.3%

In this view, Gazeta emerges as the clear leader, followed by Onet and Interia.

Effective SEO Positioning

SimilarWeb data also reveal which major portal excels at content SEO and optimization. The share of visits generated by search engines indicates this.

source: Reporterzy.info based on SimilarWeb data for December 2017

Onet leads in attracting search engine traffic, slightly ahead of Interia and notably ahead of Gazeta, when SEO-generated traffic share is used as a success measure. In absolute visitor numbers, the ranking changes slightly.

Estimated Monthly Visits from Search Engines

• Onet - 72 million
• Wirtualna Polska - 42 million
• Interia - 33 million
• Gazeta - 15 million
• O2 - 7 million

In this ranking, Onet remains the leader, but Wirtualna Polska takes second place. Though its SEO traffic share is lower than Interia and Gazeta, WP achieves significantly higher absolute results.