Salomon Rondon scored the only goal of the match as Newcastle United edged relegation rivals Huddersfield Town to move six points ahead of them.
Rondon made no mistake from close-range on the 55-minute mark to earn the Magpies a crucial three points on the road.
Newcastle are now in 14th place following the win - six points above today's losers Huddersfield, who remain in 18th.
How It Happened
The Terriers came close to an early lead and forced an impressive save out of Martin Dubravka. The 'keeper was forced to full-stretch to deny a long-range Philip Billing free-kick.
Newcastle then went close through Fabian Schar after being found from a Kenedy free-kick, but he couldn't beat Jonas Lossl from a tight angle.
Soon after the second-half started, Rondon was found by Javier Manquillo and the Venezuelan striker was clinical with his finish.
It seemed a tad harsh on the hosts, but Newcastle had a huge and precious lead in Yorkshire.
It was almost an immediate response from Huddersfield with Chris Lowe forcing another excellent save out of Dubravka.
The second-half was spent mostly in Newcastle's half and it was a typical Rafael Benitez team performance - holding onto a lead.
It wasn't until stoppage-time before the next chance and it was a big one. Laurent Depoitre couldn't sort his feet out in front of goal and that was the Terriers' last chance to salvage something.
Huddersfield had all the possession and territory but it was eventually worthless, and the result looks one of those that could be a huge one towards the relegation battle.
How It Happened
Huddersfield Town manager David Wagner has admitted it is "difficult" to keep on "believing" after such negative results.
"It is not easy to keep believing when you have so many defeats, so many narrow defeats where you think do we deserve it, but my part is to keep everyone's heads held high," Wagner said.
"We have to make sure our performances are the same level as they have been. At the moment, we are playing very well, consistently, but don't have the right result. They had one chance and took it."
Newcastle United boss Rafael Benitez was delighted with the shift his team put in today and described it as a "good achievement".
"Against a team so close to us in the table, and to get three points, it was a good achievement," Benitez said.
"This group of players deserve credit and today they came together and worked hard. We gave the ball away a little bit in the first-half, but in the second-half we were better organised.
"The idea was to exploit them on the counter-attack and exploit the space behind them."