The Star Online still No. 1 portal

MDA: News site most read since June

PETALING JAYA: The Star Online maintained its position as Malaysia’s No. 1 news portal and established itself as the No. 2 overall web domain, hitting a high of more than 3.7 million unique visitors (UVs) in September.

The Star Online has been holding the No. 1 spot for news portals since June, according to the September report from the Malaysian Digital Association (MDA) released yesterday.

Malay dailies also did well with the online portals of Harian Metro (3.5 million UVs), Berita Harian (3.4 million) and Sinar Harian (3.3 million) taking the second, third and fourth spots respectively in terms of news.

Malaysiakini (3.1 million) was the fifth most popular news portal and Astro Awani came in sixth with 2.8 million unique visitors, while the New Straits Times broke into the top 20 in September.

“This was a watershed year not only for Malaysian politics, but also for news sites,” said Star Media Group chief content officer Esther Ng.

“The 14th general election in May saw a change in government, which led to a more independent media landscape – and readers are responding,” she said.

Using the Comscore MMX Multi-Platform to record the number of visitors, the MDA rated Maybank’s online banking portal, maybank2u .com.my, with its nearly 4.7 million UVs in September, as the top web domain in Malaysia.

MDA is an apex representative body for online publishers, advertising agencies and digital service providers in Malaysia.

The ratings are based on both desktop and mobile device users.

In June, Astro Awani and The Star were rated as among the two “most trusted” sources of news in Malaysia, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018.