guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

It is one of the world's leading online newspapers, becoming the first UK newspaper to attract more than 25 million unique users in a month (October 2008). On 7 July 2005, following the London bombings, 1.3 million unique users visited the site and a total of 7.8 million pages were viewed, a record for guardian.co.uk.

The site is made up of a core news site, plus a network of niche websites covering subjects including media, sport, education and the public sector. guardian.co.uk is notable for its engagement with readers, including long-running talkboards and, more recently, a network of weblogs. Its seven blogs were joined on March 14, 2006 by a new comment site, Comment is free, named after the famous quote by The Guardian editor, C. P. Scott. Both the talkboards and blogs accept comments without pre-moderation, although all now require registration for comments.

Most of the site can be viewed for free and without registration, though some services such as leaving comments on articles require users to register.

Ownership

guardian.co.uk is part of the Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, and new media including The Guardian daily newspaper, The Observer Sunday newspaper, and the Manchester Evening News. All the aforementioned are owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to takeover by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.

History

guardian.co.uk was launched in 1999, born of the Guardian New Media Lab. Its popularity soared after the September 11th attack in the United States, largely thanks to the diverse range of viewpoints published in the Guardian newspaper. The website won the Best Newspaper category in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards, beating the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Variety. 1.

In 2006 guardian.co.uk reported its first profitable year, with income coming mostly from recruitment and display advertising.

In May 2007, guardian.co.uk begun an 18-month programme of redesigning and adding features to the entire website, starting with the travel section, then moving through the rest of the site and the front page, finally updating the blogging and community features.