The other day the always informative journalism blogger Malcolm Coles showed how UK newspapers were doing a bit of SEO by stuffing their web-pages full of Patrick Swayze results and tags.  This follows Malcom's earlier analysis that the Daily Mail had become the UK's most popular online newspaper....thanks to its coverage of Michael Jackson's death (on another note, check out how the Mail is copying right wing blogs in the US with its Obama coverage).

This was demonstrated by Comscore earlier in the year when it showed that most UK newspapers get 50%+ of their visitors abroad and now Robin Goad of metrics firm Hitwise has weighed in on the same theme.

Robin's stats show that a number of UK sites rank highly in the top 200 list of media sites in the US. This includes BBC News (no 21), The Daily Mail (no 47), The Daily Telegraph (no 74) The FT (115), The Times (131) and The Guardian (134) - I'm surprised the latter isn't higher given its attempts to lure like minded latte drinking liberals in the US.

There's been a more modest growth in Australian visitors to UK sites, but then organisations like the BBC already started with a high base being the 13th most popular news site in Australia.

It's the demographics that should spark the most interest with US brands. Wealthy Americans (household income $150k+) were the most likely to visit UK news sites, and they are most likely to be based in California and New York.   Perhaps more curiously, the least wealthy (under $30k) were the second most likely and Robin wonders whether this is due to immigrants and students.

Similarly, Experian's stats show that "aspiring contemporaries" and "affluent suburbia" over-index in terms of US visitors to UK news sites.

Useful stuff for US marketers looking to target wealthier consumers.   Though those of us working over here...now we do all tell our clients that a large chunk of those X million visitors who saw our campaigns are not from these shores...don't we?

Image, Robin Goad Hitwise