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Posted March 11, 2004
Your site's profile in detail...
Is this your news site...
or is this your news site?
The charts show two sites from Newsknife’s Top 100 most relevant
news sites as at March 2004. (We assess a site's relevance by –
amongst other things - its performance at presenting major stories
promptly compared with other news sites. Read more about how
we rate.)
The chart data is modeled on the Google
News site layout. Each chart bar represents the number of
times the news site appeared on a particular Google News page during
the many times we went there.
The left hand bar shows the number of appearances on the Home page
that we noted during our visits. (The Google News home page appears
to list around seven sites for each story.)
Next is the first sub-page, which usually contains around 30 news
site listings. And then on down to page 10, which we think is as
far as most people would look.
Site A had 8 appearances on the Home page and 89 on the first sub-page.
Site B had one appearance on the Home page and two on the first
sub-page.
Google News says the site positions on their pages are sorted by
relevance. The ideal for a site is to get as many appearances on
the Home page and page one as possible because as with standard
search engine results, these are the sites people are most likely
to see and click through to.
Our examples are an interesting contrast. We think both could be
considered as well-known news sites. Both made around the same number
of appearances in our sample. Site A appeared 236 times, and Site
B 219 times. Yet what a difference in their visibility.
Site A has a near perfect profile, mostly up front on the Home
page and sub-page one where people will see them. By contrast, many
people will lose interest before they see Site B’s listings.
The chances are the sites have a similar visibility profile with
the public outside their appearances in Google News. Newsknife believes
that Google News is a good barometer of how well a news site is
serving the general public.
The task for Site B is to look hard at the approach and presentation
of their site and stories to see if they can improve. They might
study Google statements on Google News relevance (About
Google News and Google
Friends Newsletter). They might consider consulting a specialist
in Search Engine Optimization (more...).
Both sites could also aspire to increase the volume of their appearances
at Google News. That might be a harder task.
The relevance standard required to be listed on Google News' home
page must be particularly fierce. Not surprisingly, the major ranking
on Newsknife’s home page includes
a Who’s Who of the world’s best.
This reflects the tough competition to be a top news site on the
web. But sites can improve, and they can slide down.
Your news site’s profile
Newsknife can supply a detailed Relevance Profile for any news
site that we have recorded in our many examinations of Google News
since December 2003.
We believe this material is valuable to any site that wants to
see how well it is doing compared with other sites, and where it
could do better.
A Newsknife News Site Relevance Profile is available to you for
$US200.
with your inquiry. We do not send an automatic response. We will
study the data for your chosen site and then respond, usually within
a week.
Profile contents:
You receive the following data from appearances we have noted at
Google News for your chosen site, up to 200 appearances back from
your request date.
Summary:
- Totals of the number of appearances that we recorded for your
chosen site on the Google News home page and sub-pages 1-10.
- Likewise for the median (middle) ranked site in our list. This
gives you a comparative measure of the performance of your chosen
site.
- The highest and lowest relevance positions that we calculated
for the site at Google News.
For each appearance:
- The site name and home page URL we recorded for the appearance.
(Some sites have many URLs and site names. We may be able to supply
these.)
- Where we found the appearance in Google News: Top Story 1 or
2; or World Story 1,2 or 3; or US story 1,2 or 3.
- The Google News page (home page or sub-pages 1-10) where we
noted the appearance.
- The relevance order we calculated for the appearance.
- The New York time usually to within a minute, when we noted
the appearance.
- Often, the headline you used for the appearance.
The material can be supplied in either of these formats
- A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file including a chart of the
summary data. The file would be sent to you attached to an email.
- Plain text in the body of an email. The text could be in a comma-delimited
format to help you import it into a spreadsheet.
Newsknife in-depth information tools:
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reserved.
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