Gawker sites see page views begin to return as Jezebel’s April traffic bests last year’s

Since Gawker Media relaunched its network of websites in February, there has been much talk about the immediate drop in unique visitors and page views. But three months later, the numbers look a little different.

While not at peak traffic levels, page views for half of the Gawker sites are higher than they were this time last year, according to data from comScore.

Page views have been rising at all but two of the Gawker sites since the initial drop after relaunch.

In fact, Jezebel’s page views in April are the highest for any month since at least April 2010.

I asked Gawker’s Nick Denton whether the comScore numbers are consistent with what they’ve seen internally. He responded:

“True to say that pageviews have recovered ahead of uniques. But uniques themselves hit bottom in mid-February and — if anything — have crept back since.”

Denton pointed me to this Quantcast chart showing uniques:

The comScore numbers show a continuing decline in unique visitors since relaunch, though the numbers for May are not yet available and it appears from Quantcast that they may be increasing this month.

The comScore numbers also show a year-to-year decline in uniques at all but two of the Gawker sites, and that may prove to be a bigger concern.

As Denton noted in a July 2010 memo to staff, “We all know unique visitors are much harder to move than pageviews.”

He also emphasized the importance of unique visitors in a December 2009 note:

“Expect more emphasis in 2010 on clicks through from external sites — and the “uniques” which measure of the number of people that we reach. We can’t just satisfy our existing regulars; we have to recruit new ones.”

That remains true today.

Previously: Yahoo grew unique visitors in April while New York Times, others declined