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Posted September 10, 2007.
Newsknife rates news sites on relevance (how),
based on our analysis of the main Google
News site. For just $US10 join the Newsknife Members'
Area now and see full detailed lists.
Newsknife "Wire Services Watch"
progress report after 9 days
(Also see our
standard ratings for September.)
Since August 31, 2007, Google News has included the major wire
services amongst its listings.
They are the Press Association, Associated Press, Canadian Press
and Agence France-Presse. "Google
News to Host Wire Service Stories" PCWorld
We compare here our pre-wire-service rankings for all of August
with our wire-services-included rankings for the first 9 days of
September. (Note that our September sample is small: 9010 listings
by 1092 sites for 72 news stories.)
Newsknife finds the changes dramatic. We give our conclusions below
these lists.
No.1 sites:
The second column is the number of times we found that site as the
first source for a news story.
August
1 13 Forbes
2 13 New
York Times
3 8 ABC
News
4 7 Reuters
5 6 Washington
Post
6 6 Guardian
Unlimited, UK
September 1-9
1 7 Guardian
Unlimited, UK
2 5 New
York Times
3 4 Washington
Post
4 4 The
Associated Press
5 3 BBC
News, UK
6 3 Voice
of America
Appearances on home page:
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.
August
1 New
York Times
13 8 6 8 7 4 5
2 Forbes
13 8 6 7 4 2 5
3 Washington
Post
6 6 10 5 9 6 8
4 Reuters
5 Guardian
Unlimited, UK
6 Voice
of America
September 1-9
1 New
York Times
5 3 3 2 4 2 1
2 Guardian
Unlimited, UK
7 1 2 3 1 3 3
3 Forbes
2 4 4 3 4 0 1
4 Washington
Post
5 The
Associated Press
6 Reuters
Appearances on home page + 10 sub-pages:
The total number of appearances we observed for each site.
August
1 Guardian
Unlimited, UK 562
2 Washington
Post 468
3 New York
Times 395
4 Forbes 423
5 ABC
News 343
6 International
Herald Tribune 310
September 1-9
1 Guardian
Unlimited, UK, 243
2 AFP,
179
3 New York
Times, 170
4 Washington
Post, 161
5 The Associated
Press, 158
6 BBC News, UK,
170
And here are three No1. listings for news stories. See all 72 No.1
sources we recorded during September 1-9, in the Newsknife Members'
Area.
Sharif departs London for Pakistan: aide - AFP
Biden
Faults Petraeus' Assessment - Guardian
Bin
Laden Tape: Timing Over Substance - AP
Newsknife's comment...
Our "Top Sites" rating shown on the Newsknife home page,
is the "Appearances on [Google News] home page" rating
shown above. We think that this is the most useful rating, given
the small sample.
Associated Press has entered the top 6 in all three ratings. AFP
isn't far behind, (see the full lists in Newsknife's Members' Area).
Such a strong showing by the wire services suggests this is the
new reality. Some others sites will presumably move down the Google
News rankings to make way.
It has been
said that newspaper sites for example, could see a drop
in traffic if they run exact duplicates of the wire stories. Google
News will hide these duplicates.
The fact is, Google News rewards originality in reporting.
This leads to the other remarkable feature of our September-to-date
ratings: the rise of non-wire-service site Guardian Unlimited.
Surely, we can infer here that Google News is rewarding originality.
In Newsknife's opinion this is a long-deserved reward. Guardian
Unlimited has always had strong volume at Google News. This can
be seen above in our August ratings for appearances on Google News
home page and 10 sub-pages of listings.
Here's another site where original content appears to be rewarded
by Google News:
"Hug the nearest Google employee" - DailyTech.com
Newsknife's "Wire Services Watch" will continue tracking
the ratings rise and fall for individual news sites over the next
few months (including the wire services). We'll show you those that
appear to be winners or losers.
You can see our full "Wire Services Watch" progress reports in the Newsknife Members'
Area. Click now at the left of this page to join.
Other new stuff at Google News
Wire service sites are the hot topic, but Newsknife has found two
other features at Google News for the first time during this September.
The first is "Comments" Here is one on news about Senator Larry
Craig. The link may no longer lead to the original comment.
Comment by Melanie Sloan, Citizens for Responsibility &
Ethics in Washington
The second is YouTube videos. Here's an example. Video:
US warned in 'bin Laden video'
We found both these placed among the seven top sources for an individual
news story. This ranks them as major sources.
Visit Newsknife often
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for news of the moment. The 3-month Newsknife Members'
Area membership lets you see the ratings for each site in
amazing detail.
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