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.