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Google News Annual Trend update:
The impact of Associated Press on the home page of Google News,
over the year since AP listings started appearing in September 2007

Posted October 1, 2008

The above chart shows the percentage shares of listings found by Newsknife on the home page of the main US Google News site over the 12 months Sept '07 - Aug '08. It suggests that Associated Press' stellar performance there has been largely at the expense of smaller news sites. Ironically, amongst these may be the sites of small newspapers whose listings at Google News are a valuable source of traffic.

It also suggests that the other major sites have increased their share at the expense of smaller sites. And that recently smaller sites have recovered slightly.

Right from its debut at Google News last September, Associated Press (AP) has been rated by Newsknife as one of the top 20 sites on the Google News home page by number of appearances. The chart tracks its progress by comparing three groups of sites: (1) AP, (2) the other sites we rated in our Top 20 each month and (3) all the other lower rated sites that Newsknife found there each month.

The chart is generated from a table of monthly percentages. In September 2007, for example, 2.9% of the listings Newsknife found were AP, 44.6% were the other 19 of the top 20 sites, and 52.6% were the lower rated sites. The table, showing each month's percentages, can be seen in the Newsknife Members' Area (Click here to learn more about membership. It's a modest $US10.)

The numbers from which the percentages were derived can be found in another table in our Members' Area. An excerpt is shown below. In September 2007 Newsknife found 31 appearances by AP on the Google News home page. This is 2.9% of the 1068 listings we found by all sites that month. We converted the numbers into percentages for the chart because the number of listings found by Newsknife varies month to month.

The full table shows every news site that Newsknife rated in its top 20 in at least one month during the 12 months. You can see it in the Newsknife Members' Area. It includes ABC Online, AFP, Al-Jazeera, AllAfrica.com, Baltimore Sun, Bloomberg, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, CNN International, Forbes, FOX News, Guardian Unlimited, guardian.co.uk, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Monsters and Critics, Newsweek, Reuters Canada, TIME, Times Online, USA Today, Voice of America, Wall Street Journal and Xinhua.

 

Sep 07 Oct 07 Nov 07 Dec 07 Jan 08 Feb 08 Mar 08 Apr 08 May 08 Jun 08 Jul 08 Aug 08
ABC News 15 24 30 30 26 19 26 36 29 39 30 24
BBC News 20 26 37 34 32 33 54 39 47 44 50 52
CNN 21 27 40 36 41 21 35 38 40 35 38 38
New York Times 57 82 70 78 77 60 100 77 93 71 89 75
Reuters 31 84 86 76 94 56 87 74 88 71 91 59
The Associated Press 31 64 60 42 42 74 136 143 126 120 139 130
Washington Post 33 28 24 38 52 36 65 36 57 42 56 58



Treat the conclusions on this page with caution. The appearance of Associated Press at Google News is only one of several possible explanations for the figures. Other explanations and limiting factors include: an unrelated change in the Google News algorithm, the luck of when Newsknife happened to monitor Google News, the region where each month's major news event occurred, and a change of format or content at a news site.

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