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Posted June 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 116,096 listings by 4834 sites
for 1224 news items during 2009.
Feature article:
New Google News changes could increase some click-thrus 3x
If you click to see all the articles for any Google News story
you'll find a useful new subpage, (Google
News gets a makeover). Newsknife calls it the Master Subpage
because it expands considerably on the information shown for any
story on the home page of Google News.
Newsknife has had to study the mechanics of this new subpage system
closely and we discuss here some of the opportunities and issues
we think it raises.
A particular opportunity for news site owners is that in certain
common circumstances your listing for a story could appear 6 or
more times where before at best it could appear twice. In other
words there is a 300% increase more or less in the likelihood that
someone will click through to your site.
The change in detail:
Until recently, if a reader of the Google News home page clicked
"all (number) stories" at the foot of a particular story group,
they would be taken to the first of many subpages of extra listings
for that story. Each subpage had around 30 listings "sorted by relevance"
in descending order, rather like a standard Google search result
page.
Now the reader is taken to a first subpage that is feature-rich.
It usually includes a timeline chart linking to various headlines
that appeared at peak times as the story developed.
However, most important we think, it gathers listings for that
story into groups like "related blogs" and sites belonging geographically
to regions affected by the story.
For example a story about North Korea might have site listings
gathered into "South Korea" and "Washington, USA" groups. The user
can drill down to more listings on sub-subpages within each group.
The advantage for Google News users:
At first glance this master subpage seems like a great idea for
users. And largely it is. Instead of ploughing down through subpage
after subpage of listings to find, for example, a local site covering
the story, now they can simply scroll to a group of around three
listings for that story under (in our example) "South Korea". And
then they can drill down to sub-subpages solely of South Korea-related
sites covering that story. This is a usefully focused system.
They could do the same for blogs covering the story, or for Washington
coverage or other appropriate groupings of coverage. Or they could
drill down as in the past to "all related articles".
What's not to like? Well, we discovered that there is a certain
amount of duplicating of listings. As you might expect, you could
find a Washington-based blog listed in the Washington, Blogs and
All groupings. There may be no way Google News can avoid this, but
after a while we found it a bit annoying.
The advantage for site owners:
The repeating of certain listings may become annoying to some Google
News users but it could increase the traffic significantly to those
lucky sites who now have a listing repeated.
Here's how this would work. In the past in Newsknife's experience,
almost every listing for a particular story was unique. Down in
the subpages for a story, a particular site might be listed several
times with different headlines for the developing story. But we've
only found one circumstance where a particular listing would sometimes
be duplicated. If a listing was one of the (usually) seven found
on the home page of Google News for a story, there was a good chance
it would be repeated as one of the first few listings on the first
subpage for that story.
In the new setup by contrast, we found several listings appearing
several times. Try for yourself and see.
Here's a typical example. Around 7 pm New York Time, May 21st we
found the top headline for the first story at Google News to be
"Cheney Repudiates Obama on Terrorism Policy" from New York Times.
We clicked through to the Google News master subpage for the story.
The first listing on the master subpage was this very same listing.
Scrolling down the master subpage we found the "All related articles"
link and clicked to its first sub-subpage The same listing was repeated
there as the first listing. Back on the master subpage we scrolled
to the 'United States' group and drilled down. Again the same listing
appeared first on the first sub-subpage. Again also for the groupings
"Washington, DC, USA" and "District of Columbia". Six well-placed
copies of the listing in all. Surely this would increase traffic
to that story at New York Times.
And as you can see above, some stories have several similarly-named
regional groupings. In our opinion the new Google News subpage system
is likely still being fine tuned. (It may have changed slightly
by the time you read this article.)
Newsknife boldly goes...
Newsknife aims to continue rating sites down to the equivalent
of 10 ordinary subpages deep, viewing around 300 listings maximum.
We figure this is as deep as any but the most intrepid user is likely
to drill. We like to simulate a typical user experience so that
Newsknife's ratings will be a credible indicator of news site performance.
We imagine that a typical "power user" of the new Google News
subpage system might study a master subpage and then drill down
at most to two sub-subpages for each group of listings on the master
subpage. That could easily place 300+ listings in front of his or
her eyes.
However, because to date we have found too many groupings that
seem overly similar (like "Washington, DC, USA" and "District of
Columbia") we think our ratings would be skewed excessively by duplicated
listings if we drilled down from several groups on the master subpage.
For the moment therefore we are monitoring only the sub-subpages
of the group "All related articles". Without further ado, here is
the Newsknife Master Subpage rating for May (See how we rate news sites)...
Master subpage sources
We found Associated Press 11 times as the first source on master
subpages through to 6 times as the 7th source. In total we found
them 156 times on master subpages.
The full list of 496 sites we found is in the Newsknife Members'
Area along with detailed lists of all our current ratings. For just
$US10 join the Newsknife Members'
Area now and see. Click at left to join.
May only:
1 Washington Post
11 3 7 9 3 6 156
2 The Associated Press
18 12 16 24 15 0 153
3 Reuters
12 15 14 10 4 11 114
4 New York Times
15 12 5 2 10 2 125
5 Los
Angeles Times
10 5 8 5 7 2 82
6 Huffington Post, NY
1 0 0 0 0 29 62
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
May:
95 blogs and their 524 blog headlines found at Google News:
1 New York Times 55
2 Los Angeles Times 40
3 FOXNews 38
4 Reuters Blogs 30
5 Wall Street Journal Blogs 39
6 CNN Political Ticker 28
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 24 and 42 sites are in the Newsknife
Members' Area.
May only:
1 7 3 The Associated Press
2 3 1 Washington Post
3 2 3 New York Times
4 1 3 Bloomberg
5 2 1 BBC News, UK
6 2 1 Reuters, UK
Year to June :
1 19 16 The Associated Press
2 17 12 Reuters
3 8 11 Bloomberg
4 7 6 Reuters, UK
5 6 7 ABC News
6 6 4 Wall
Street Journal
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 48 and 87 sites
are in the Newsknife Members' Area.
May only:
1 24 The Associated Press
2 23 New York Times
3 20 Washington Post
4 17 Reuters
5 15 Times Online, UK
6 14 Los
Angeles Times
Year to June :
1 143 The Associated Press
2 105 New York Times
3 102 Reuters
4 65 CNN
5 61 Reuters, UK
6 60 FOX News
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 Associated Press 24 times on the home page
of Google News as the first source for a news item through to 21
times as the 7th source. The full lists of 253 and 702 sites are
in the Newsknife Members' Area.
May only:
1 The Associated Press
24 52 34 21 18 14 21
2 New York Times
23 17 11 12 10 12 12
3 Al-Jazeera, Qatar
0 48 2 6 6 4 7
4 Reuters
5 Washington
Post
6 Los
Angeles Times
Year to June :
1 The Associated Press
143 202 154 117 116 74 70
2 Al-Jazeera, Qatar
3 338 13 20 23 16 20
3 New York Times
105 46 49 50 44 40 34
4 Reuters
5 Washington
Post
6 Voice
of America
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.
May only:
1 The Associated Press 756
2 New York Times 416
3 Washington Post 420
4 Reuters 401
5 Los Angeles Times 287
6 BBC News, UK 270
Year to June :
1 The Associated Press 5506
2 Reuters 2581
3 AFP 2376
4 New York Times 2025
5 Reuters, UK 2124
6 BBC News, UK 1917
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 101 sites is in the Newsknife Members' Area.
May: % HOME TOTAL
1 78.79 26 33 Reuters
2 41.01 73 178 Al-Jazeera
3 32.31 42 130 Christian Science Monitor
4 30.40 69 227 Voice of America
5 29.70 60 202 FOX News
6 29.63 48 162 guardian.co.uk
% increase on Google News home page
Column 1 shows appearances that Newsknife found on Google News
home page year to date pre-May. Column 2 is appearances found
during May. Column 3 is the % increase for May. The full list
is in the Newsknife Members' Area.
Year thru
Apr MAY %
11 14 127 Politico, DC
19 14 74 Daily Times, Pakistan
16 10 63 Atlantic Online
49 28 57 Hindu, India
18 10 56 Ha'aretz, Israel
43 24 56 Telegraph.co.uk
New sites found last month
Newsknife noted 78 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.)
May:
1 1 31 Politics Daily
2 0 23 NTDTV
3 0 19 Breaking Tweets
4 0 17 Motorsport.com
5 1 13 Product Design & Development
6 1 8 Courthouse News Service
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?
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