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Posted December 10, 2004.
Welcome to Newsknife's Top Rating News Sites of 2004. It's our
end of year celebration of the third full year we've rated news
sites for quality.
For the first two years we rated using our
own system. This year we switched to rating news sites
for relevance (how) based on our analysis of the main
Google News site, news.google.com.
Google News is a major force in determining where people go for
their online news. For example, in July this year it was
reported that Guardian
Unlimited, UK had received two million visitors via
Google News during 2004 to the end of June.
This is where Newsknife comes in. Google News usually links to
hundreds of news sites for each major news item it displays on its
home page. It lists the sites "sorted by relevance", rather like
the Google search engine.
Newsknife monitors Google News frequently, performs a bit of magic
and produces consolidated figures to show you which sites we think
are the most relevant overall. They're the best sites for you to
visit.
We publish rankings for current hot topics throughout the year
(recently the US
elections and After
Arafat). And now the Top (most relevant) news sites of 2004.
This rating is produced from our analysis of 170901 individual listings
by 1994 sites for 890 news items at Google News through 2004.
Why Xinhua?
Newsknife's Top Sites of 2004 are those sites that appeared most often in our sample as the No.1
listed source for a news item at Google News.
Two of the high fliers have been subject to debate: 5th rated Xinhua, China
and 7th rated Voice of America.
Read views on their frequent high-ranking appearances at Google
News, at Poynter Online E-Media Tidbits.
Xinhua's elevated position puzzles us too. How can a Chinese news
site sometimes be more relevant to US news fans for US-related news
items than major US news sites?
Nevertheless, we think that US visitors to news.google.com can
be assured that Google News reflects a range of journalistic views
that they would be happy with. Of the 1994 sites Newsknife has noted,
here are the regions with the most sites we recorded at Google News.
India's high position would perhaps be the only question mark in
the list.
US 1291 sites
UK 125
India 40
Canada 40
Australia 27
Israel 19
Ireland 15
New Zealand 13
South Africa 13
Russia 11
Philippines 10
We found sites from around 90 regions - from Angola to Zimbabwe.
Visitors to Google News get the bonus of easy access to world opinions
on major news.
For just $US10 you can join the Newsknife Members'
Area now and see the full list of 1994 news sites grouped
by region, plus detailed lists of the most relevant sites for topics
like Iraq and 9/11. Click at the left of this page to join.
Top News Sites of 2004
These are the sites Newsknife found most frequently as the first
source for news items at Google News. The detailed list of 164 sites
is in the Newsknife Members' Area.
For example, we found The New York Times in No.1 position 89 times
during 2004. Overall we recorded 2722 appearances at Google News
by the New York Times, making it the 4th most frequently found site
in our sample.
1 89
The New York Times
2 71 Reuters
3 67 The
Washington Post
4 ABC
News
5 Xinhua, China
6 The
Christian Science Monitor
7 Voice
of America
8 CNN
9 Bloomberg
10 San
Francisco Chronicle, CA
11 Guardian
Unlimited, UK
12 International
Herald Tribune, France
Top home page sites
Google News usually lists 7 sites per major news item on its home
page. We found the following sites most frequently as home page
sources at Google News over 2004. For example, we found Reuters
71 times as the first source through to 30 times as the seventh
source; 349 home page appearances in all for 890 news items. Now,
that's relevance!.
The full list of 666"home page" sites, including the
number of times per site is in the Newsknife Members' Area.
1 Reuters
71 42
59 67 41 39 30
2 The
New York Times
89 34 51 50 47 36 19
3 The
Washington Post
67 28 42 21 35 27 37
4 ABC
News
5 CNN
6 Guardian
Unlimited, UK
7 Voice
of America
8 Xinhua, China
9 The
Christian Science Monitor
10 International
Herald Tribune, France
11 USA
Today
12 Bloomberg
The best of 2005
Visit Newsknife regularly during 2005 to discover the most relevant
news sites for news of the moment. The 3-month Newsknife Members'
Area membership lets you also see the ratings for each site
in amazing detail.
Newsknife: we rate the news sites.
All the best for 2005.
Newsknife in-depth information tools:
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Copyright © 2004 Industry Standard Computing Ltd. All rights
reserved.
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