|
Posted April 2, 2009.
Newsknife rates news sites on relevance (how),
based on our analysis of the main US-oriented Google
News site.
Read more here about our current ratings. For just $US10 join the
Newsknife Members' Area
now and see full detailed lists. Click at left to join.
The following are from our sample of 74,096 listings by 4106 sites
for 711 news items during 2009.
Featured rating:
Changes at Google News
Newsknife noticed three changes at Google News at the beginning
of March. They could affect traffic to news sites.
Firstly, the listings appear to no longer give the region and state
for each site. For example, AllAfrica.com used to be listed as "AllAfrica.com,
Washington". Now it's simply "AllAfrica.com".
US site state abbreviations also seem to have been dropped.
Secondly, on the sub-pages of listings for any story, you'll find
a panel on the left where you can click to view only local news
sites that are carrying the story. For instance, on March 30 for
a story about North Korea planning a rocket launch, we saw this
grouping...
View articles from
All Sources (5,510)
Blogs (47)
United States (3,634)
Washington, DC, USA ...
Seoul, South Korea (23)
Japan (8)
Thirdly, as suggested above, it appears to Newsknife that Google
News has significantly increased its listing of blogs. Compared
with our previous findings there's now a real blogstorm.
(Newsknife found 150 blog sites and over 500 blog listings at Google
News during March. For instance, Blogger
News Network and "Will
the Fed Buy Treasurys?". In the Newsknife Members'
Area you can see and click through to all the blog sites and blogs
we found. Join now at the left of this page.)
It looks to us as if the altered functionality is being rolled
out over time, so there may be changes since we wrote this article.
So what do the changes mean for the viewing public and site owners?
Google News has always claimed "the goal of offering our readers...
a wider variety of perspectives". This has been a strength
for them. So the questions for the public are, is Google News variety
now wider, and is it easier or harder now to access this wider variety?
We think there is wider variety because of the increase in blogs.
But how many of these blogs are news and how many opinion?
It's debatable whether there's easier access to variety. Take this
example. If there was a disaster in say, Zimbabwe, and you wanted
an on-the-spot viewpoint, in the past you could see to choose a
listing from Zimbabwe
Times, Zimbabwe. But now you might choose ZimDaily. Previously
you could see that it was ZimDaily,
UK.
So that's a disadvantage.
On the other hand, taking our Korean rocket launching example above,
you could now go straight to the grouped listings by Korean and
Japanese sites without trawling through hundreds of listings. That's
a plus.
Site owners will, in Newsknife's opinion, on balance benefit from
these changes if they take advantage of them.
Our first impression is that the local grouping of sites should
drive more traffic to local sites because it will make it easier
for viewers to choose them.
On the other hand, lesser known sites could well suffer in the
general listings because they can't be quickly identified by region.
Easier, by this logic, to choose a listing by, say, New York Times.
The growing number of blogs appearing at Google News seems to offer
a simple success formula to news site owners: start blogs for your
site and increase your chances of being listed at Google News.
See lists of the 150 blog sites and over 500 blog listings we found
during March, now in the Newsknife Members'
Area. Also don't miss our recent regional grouping of sites
found at Google News. This regional breakdown may not be possible
in future. Click at the left of this page to join.
Our standard monthly ratings:
Top Blogs
Blogs found on Google News home page + 10 sub-pages deep.
Rated by volume + Google News relevance ranking. Blogs listed here may link to one of many blogs at that site.
Visit the Newsknife Members' Area to see the full list of blogs and blog headlines
March:
94 blogs and their 573 blog headlines found at Google News:
1 USA Today 79
2 New York Times 63
3 Los Angeles Times 39
4 ABC News 26
5 CNN Political Ticker 17
6 FOXNews 21
Top sources for the 2 Top Stories
Dominating the Google News home page when you first view it are
their two "Top Stories". And dominating these are the
two news sites listed as their first sources. This is the best exposure
a news site could aim for.
The columns in the lists below are ranking, appearances noted by
Newsknife as No.1 source in the first Top Story, and the second
Top Story. The full lists of 34 and 190 sites are in the Newsknife
Members' Area.
March only:
1 8 3 The Associated Press
2 7 5 Reuters
3 2 2 Bloomberg
4 2 2 ABC News
5 1 2 FOX News
6 1 1 USA Today
Year to April :
1 11 9 Reuters
2 11 8 The Associated Press
3 6 6 Bloomberg
4 5 4 Reuters, UK
5 4 4 ABC News
6 3 5 FOX News
No. 1 sources
Google News usually lists seven news sites per major news item
on their home page and thirty on each sub-page, all "sorted
by relevance". We award each site points per appearance on
a sliding scale (with occasional tweaking) to get the ranked positions.
The second column is the number of appearances we recorded as the
first source for a news item. The full lists of 87 and 157 sites
are in the Newsknife Members' Area.
March only:
1 36 Reuters
2 35 The Associated Press
3 18 FOX News
4 18 New York Times
5 15 CNN
6 14 Times Online, UK
Year to April :
1 89 The Associated Press
2 69 Reuters
3 60 New York Times
4 42 FOX News
5 38 Reuters, UK
6 38 CNN
Home page sources
This table shows the number of appearances per site that Newsknife
found on the home page of Google News as source 1 to 7 for major
news items.
Last month we found New York Post 14 times on the home page of
Google News as the first source for a news item, 8 times as the
second source, through to 2 times as the 7th source. The full lists
of 329 and 613 sites are in the Newsknife Members' Area.
March only:
1 The Associated Press
35 48 37 16 23 11 13
2 Reuters
36 21 13 17 9 12 9
3 Al-Jazeera, Qatar
2 39 4 7 5 5 0
4 Voice of America
13 7 13 10 14 10 14
5 Washington Post
9 12 14 12 9 7 8
6 BBC News, UK
10 10 15 10 11 7 9
Year to April :
1 The Associated Press
89 85 95 65 74 44 38
2 Al-Jazeera, Qatar
2 249 9 11 12 9 7
3 Reuters
69 30 27 32 19 22 17
4 New York Times
60 21 27 28 19 19 17
5 Bloomberg
25 16 35 32 30 37 23
6 Washington Post
32 25 23 33 20 28 13
Home page + 10 sub-pages sources
Click here for a larger
page format showing all the information...
This list shows the total number of appearances we observed for
each site. Detailed lists of the top 200 sites are in the Newsknife
Members' Area.
March only:
1 The Associated Press 995
2 Reuters 697
3 AFP 518
4 BBC News, UK 352
5 Voice of America 341
6 Xinhua, China 373
Year to April :
1 The Associated Press 3323
2 Reuters 1765
3 AFP 1518
4 Xinhua, China 1529
5 Reuters, UK 1385
6 New York Times 1153
Most appearances on home page as % of site total
To get maximum traffic to your news site from Google News you need
to get as many as possible of your listings onto their home page.
Newsknife monitors listings on Google News home page and 10 sub-pages
deep.
This table shows appearances Newsknife found at Google News during
the month. It shows the % and number we found on the home page and
the combined total for the home and 10 sub-pages. The full list
of 195 sites is in the Newsknife Members' Area.
Mar: % HOME TOTAL
1 54.55 6 11 McClatchy Washington Bureau
2 50.00 6 12 Houston Chronicle
3 47.92 23 48 Bizjournals.com
4 38.67 58 150 Christian Science Monitor
5 37.93 11 29 The Mercury News
6 35.38 46 130 FOX News
% increase on Google News home page
Column 1 shows appearances that Newsknife found on Google News
home page year to date pre-March. Column 2 is appearances found
during March. Column 3 is the % increase for March. The full list
is in the Newsknife Members' Area.
Year thru
Feb MAR %
8 19 238 MSNBC
11 15 136 Telegraph.co.uk
99 117 118 Reuters
24 23 96 Bizjournals.com
54 50 93 Los Angeles Times, CA
52 47 90 Times Online, UK
New sites found last month
Newsknife noted 100 sites for the first time at Google News during
last month. Here are the Top 6 ranked by volume found. The columns
of the list are rank, home page appearances, total appearances.
(The list may include existing sites with major new addresses.)
March:
1 0 31 The Catholic Spirit
2 1 13 The Business Insider
3 0 9 mydigitalfc.com
4 0 8 LALATE
5 0 6 Personal Liberty Digest
6 0 6 SANA
Visit Newsknife regularly to discover the most relevant news sites
for news of the moment. The 3-month Newsknife Members'
Area membership lets you see the ratings for each site in
amazing detail.
Suggestions and comments?
Newsknife: we rate the news sites.
Newsknife in-depth information tools:
Return to top of page...
Copyright © 2009 Industry Standard Computing Ltd. All rights
reserved.
|
