My City University colleague Neil Thurman has been busy looking at the impact of British news websites in the United States. And maybe it’s time for the tipping of web pages into the Second Life equivalent of Boston Harbour.

Here’s what he found:

– Online, the BBC News website gets more US readers than Fox News, USA Today, and the LA Times; and the Guardian more than Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal in their home markets.

– UK news websites studied received an average of 36% of their readers from the US, although that figure is as high as 73% for some.

– The Drudge Report was the most important referrer of US readers to UK news websites, accounting for 25% of traffic.

– Google referred about 8% of US traffic and Google News 7%.

– The stickiest UK sites with American readers ranked:

1. BBC News
2. Telegraph.co.uk
3. theSun.co.uk
4. Guardian.co.uk
5. FT.com
6. Times Online
7. Independent.co.uk

– There was an indirect link between sites’ success on Google News and the practice of publishing copy straight from wire services.

– Sites like theSun.co.uk and Times Online saw considerable potential in their international audience. On the other hand the editorial director of Associated Newspapers’ websites saw little value in international readers and “would rather have a hundred per cent UK audience.”

– Overseas readers’ promiscuous behaviour – “[they come and look at] one page a month and then go away again” (Stuart Kirkpatrick, Scotsman.com) – was cited as a barrier to monetizing the overseas audience.

– The editor of theSun.co.uk speculated that their global readership may be changing their news values: “our breaking news…seems to have recently developed slightly more of a global feel.”

It’s out in a journal soon, but a pre-print version is available from Neil’s faculty page.