Guardian Unlimited has been named best newspaper on the worldwide web for the fourth year running at the annual Newspaper Awards.
Judges at the award ceremony, held last night in central London, praised the Guardian site as "an excellent example, a complete all-round package" with "superb web-exclusive content".
The site launched in 1998 and has grown to encompass a network of 18 sites, including MediaGuardian.co.uk, under the Guardian Unlimited umbrella.
It is the most popular newspaper-owned site on the web and second only to the BBC in terms of traffic for a news site.
"What can stop the Guardian site? A winner for a fourth straight year, it had one judge stating that the site was now set to open by default on their browser," said the judging panel.
Today it emerged Guardian Unlimited hit another important milestone after crashing through the 100 million page impression barrier for the first time.
Figures for March show the site attracted 107 million page impressions over the month, with more than 9 million users.
The network has been boosted by the Iraqi conflict as internet users around the world turn to the web for breaking news.
The Telegraph's site, which was praised by the judges for its breaking news ticker and multimedia content, was runner up in the category and FT.com came third.
