Google News Trend Watch: 2008-09 update:

1. Major news sites could be increasing their hold on Google News home page.

2. A list of sites we think are trending up or down.

Posted October 1, 2008

Sep '08 - Aug '09

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 September 2008 - August 2009.

It suggests three points. First, the rise in the share of home page appearances by 20 major news sites, especially Associated Press, seems to be increasing. At September 2007 (as shown on a second chart in the full version of this article in our Newsknife Members' Area), they were just over 40% of all the sites we found there. By August 2008 they'd climbed to just over 50%. By August 2009 they were hovering around 60%. Associated Press, the leading site in Newsknife's ratings is increasing its share slightly more than the other top 20 sites.

This increase appears to be at the expense of smaller and less well-known news sites.

The second point the chart suggests is that the US Presidential Elections produced a surge in appearances by smaller news sites on the home page of Google News. This is probably the result of increased reporting by local media of individual state electoral activities.

The third point of interest is that Newsknife noted significant changes in the construction of the Google News site during March - May this year. Videos and blogs appeared more frequently, the regional location of each site listing was dropped, and a more functional first sub-page was added for each story. Coincidentally or not, the share of appearances by the Top 20 sites and Associated Press increased at that time.

The chart above is generated from a table of monthly percentages. In September 2008 9.41% of the listings Newsknife found were AP, 53.6% were the other 19 of the top 20 sites, and 37.06% 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 these percentages are derived can be seen in another table in our Members' Area. The first 4 of the 89 sites in that table are shown below. In September 2008 Newsknife found 153 appearances by AP on the Google News home page. This is 9.41% of the 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 table shows every news site that Newsknife found on the home page of Google News for at least six of the 12 months.

The right-hand three columns of the table show the trend in the number of appearances at Google News home page over the year. The column Sep-May is the average of the appearances for each site for the first 9 months. Column Jun-Aug is their average for the last 3 months. The final column shows the amount by which each site's average increased or decreased over the last 3 months compared with the first 9 months.

The sites are ranked in order of those that increased their average appearances the most through to the sites with the greatest decrease in appearances found by Newsknife. For example, the average AP appearances found by Newsknife increased by 52.11 in the last three months.

The full table shows 89 news site that Newsknife rated in its top 20 in for at least six months during the 12 months. You can see it in the Newsknife Members' Area. It includes ABC News, AFP, Al-Jazeera, AllAfrica.com, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlantic Online, Baltimore Sun, BBC News, Bizjournals.com, Bloomberg, Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, CBS News, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, CQPolitics.com, Dallas Morning News, Detroit News, Forbes, FOX News, guardian.co.uk, Ha'aretz, Hindu, Houston Chronicle, Huffington Post, International Herald Tribune, Jerusalem Post, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Monsters and Critics, MSNBC, New York Daily News, New York Times, Newsday, Newsweek, NPR, Philadelphia Inquirer, PRESS TV, Reuters, Salt Lake Tribune, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Seattle Times, SFGate.com, Telegraph.co.uk, The Mercury News, TIME, Times Online, United Press International, USA Today, Voice of America, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Washington Times.