What removal from Google could mean for your news site

Thinking about removing your content from Google?

Press Gazette’s Wire blog has reported on a story in the Telegraph giving tips on how to survive your website no longer being indexed by the search engine.

The advice comes from Neil Boom, PR Director of technology company KTS who own Onepagenews.com - a website that The Wire suggests may be seen as a rival to the web giant’s own news service - which was quietly dropped from indexing by Google.

According to the Telegraph, the move by the site saw Onepagenews’ traffic tumble from around 18,000 per day to around a paltry 700 (aspiring Murdochs may wish to pay attention to that particular statistic).

The company was then forced to set about rebuilding its online presence whilst investigating why Onepagenews was suddenly absent from Google.

Boom’s tips include setting up news alerts and stories by email functionality and making registration as simple as possible, also flagging up the extra benefits for readers who register.

"Focus on events under your own control. We looked at content, distribution, added value features and site promotion," he says.

And, he adds, don't panic.

Thinking about paywalls? Read this first...

With the paywall debate having no end in sight, it is sometimes nice to step back and examine the lay of the land, particularly for regional and small publishers.

Having been accused by his most prolific critic as suggesting solutions that only work for large-scale, national publishers, and with a close friend finding himself the Managing Editor of a local newspaper in Montana, Steve Outing (pictured), of EditorandPublisher.com has done just that.

Whilst his tips come from US case studies there is still plenty there for panicking publishers to step away from the paywall, at least for a little longer.

He argues that a recent American Press Institute study demonstrates that paywalls only work in certain markets. One newspaper, he states, could maintain a paywall because it was the only paper in town. Another, though, couldn’t sustain the model due to competition from a local free website.

So what is the alternative? One suggestion, with his editor-friend in mind, is a five-point plan of generating revenue from the digital output whilst protecting the print product, particularly of use to those publishers who operate within tourist towns:

1. Offer paid subscriptions to the newspaper that also include free access to a digital-replica edition.

2. Offer paid digital-replica edition subscriptions that mimic the paper in electronic form, for those second-home owners in the area and others who want to keep up with...news and developments and prefer not to receive the print edition by mail when the news is several days old.

3. Continue to keep all your Web site content -- including locally produced news -- free to all. And yes, that includes print subscribers who might be tempted to save money, cancel the print edition, and rely on the free Web site.

4. Have your Web manager focus on better ad targeting, in order to identify out-of-area users as potential tourists interested in hotels, camping, excursions, etc. and show them relevant ads.

5. Most importantly, devise other reasons for paying print and/or digital subscribers to keep paying -- primarily by value-added online, digital, mobile and even physical extras not available to non-paying users of the Web site.

This is expanded for those who may not have such a tourist trade to include advice on finding other incentives for people to subscribe to your newspaper, such as a free breaking-news mobile service that would otherwise be charged for.

Outing will have to wait if his advice satisfies his critic but it is certainly worth a look by anyone who has a Google-sized headache from the paid-content debate.

Northcliffe to trial topic pages

ThisisBristol.co.uk has become Northcliffe Media's first local news site to use topic pages, reports Journalism.co.uk

During the two week trial, articles on the site will now include inline links from key words, such as places, names and issues, to a web page gathering stories, relevant information and multimedia linked to that topic, according to the report.

Robert Hardie, content strategy director at Northcliffe, told the website how the pages are created using a process called data-mining, which uses technology from OpenCalais and Nstein to analyse stories semantically and suggest subjects for topic pages.

"We've already been data-mining our archive and automatically data-mine every live story as part of the normal publishing cycle," he said.

"Once a topic is mentioned more than three times a topic page is created for that topic and an email alerts the site publisher. They can then decide to unpublish the page if they don't want it; allow it to stand unenhanced or gather the extra images, video and static content for it.

"We're starting the enhancement process with the most popular topic pages."He also said how the sites with topic pages will have to carefully monitor the level of sensitivity employed by the semantic technologies so that users are not bombarded with links from every word.

Northcliffe plan to roll out the pages across the rest of the Thisis network following the live testing.

Hardie added how the pages will help drive more traffic to Northcliffe’s websites, saying that they are 'brilliantly indexable' via Google.

Newspaper Society uses new system to measure combined print and online reach

The Newspaper Society has launched a new way of measuring integrated print and online audiences, blogs Jon Slattery.

The society claims that the scheme, Locally Connected, reveals that local media websites increase the unduplicated reach of regional and local newspapers within their circulation areas by 14%, particularly among upmarket and core middle age groups.

Locally Connected has been embraced by seven of the largest local media groups - including Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror and Newsquest - representing 70% 0f the industry.

Slattery reports how NS president David Fordham, told agency planners, MDs, digital heads, clients, research experts and publishers at last night’s launch event: “More than 80% of adults read a local newspaper in print and ironically, at a time when our revenues have been under such challenge, local media audiences have been growing across multimedia platforms.”

He said people spend more than half their time within a five-mile radius of home and are increasingly interested in local news. “The local paper is still the first place they turn to – in print and online.”

Fordham added: “The development of a robust and reliable system of multimedia audience measurement has been one of the biggest challenges facing all media today. Locally Connected now gives advertisers a unique cross-media planning system, allowing them to effectively target local communities across the UK in print as well as online.”

Project leader and NS communications director Lynne Anderson said: “Both buyers and sellers were agreed on the need to move away from the historic focus on a newspaper’s paid circulation and towards a more meaningful measurement of total reach.

“Agency planners told us their clients were increasingly looking for multimedia solutions at a local level but that it was hard to convince them to invest without hard data to back it up.”

News alerts: keeping audiences coming back for more

Newspapers maybe missing out if they don’t make full use of alerts and tools, especially when it comes to exclusive materials, argues Dorian Benkoil of Poynter Online.

He uses the example of the Times’ story of tennis player Andre Agassi’s autobiography - in which he admitted to the use of the drug crystal meth - of which they would then be publishing exclusive excerpts.

Because the Times did not have an alert system (using, say, Twitter or Facebook), which would have encouraged Benkoil to go back to the excerpts when they went live, he eventually started checking Google news and the Guardian, and didn’t return to the original source for some weeks.

This, he argues, is a missed opportunity that could lose newspapers valuable page views, advertising and other opportunities, stating that this is backed up by masses of Web analytics data.

Every little impediment, says Benkoil, is an opportunity for a visitor to leave, go somewhere else, forget they can get what they want from you.

Over time, he adds, that means the loss of real money and all the other metrics people like to use, such as "stickiness" and "engagement."

He continues by saying that if The Times had offered the chance to be alerted when the excerpts were published, not only would they have had his subsequent page views (and ad impressions), they would have had his contact info and valuable information about his interests.

Benkoil suggests that every site should have sharing apps, like the AddThis module at the bottom of the Agassi story that links to dozens of social networking and bookmarking options, amongst many other apps.

But, he concludes, publishers also need to tailor their links and offerings as much as possible.

Sometimes, he says, that will mean human intervention, such as a smart editor saying, "Hey, we've got the Agassi excerpts, they'll be big, so let's make it easy for everyone to find them and get alerted to them."

This will also increase the ability of new Semantic Web applications to place relevant alerts and adverts alongside them and it should be as easy as possible for someone to find what they are looking for on the publication’s site.

How should web traffic be measured?

A key factor in attracting advertisers is to be able to deliver an audience. So what is the best way to measure traffic to a newspaper’s website? This is something discussed in an article on the Guardian’s PDA blog.

According to the report, methods of evaluating data online are always changing. It describes how, initially, the most important web traffic measurement was page impressions.

This however prompted some publishers to try and boost ratings by using picture galleries and a move to counting unique users on a monthly basis was made.

This method counts the unique device – a computer or mobile phone for example – that requests content from a website. This monthly count does not account for the individual user, however, only the device used.

Daily newspapers, however, would prefer a daily figure so a discussion is underway as to whether the system should change again. When last week, the ABCes were published, the statistics included figures for daily unique users for the third time.

The calculation is not as simple as taking the total unique user figure and dividing it by the number of days in the month.

As the ABC explained to the Guardian: "The total monthly unique user/browser figure is deduplicated over the period of time being measured, which is a calendar month. For example, if a unique user/browser visits a website on day five and on day 12 in the month it will be counted as a daily unique user/browser on day five and a daily unique user/browser on day 12.

"Hence, it will be counted twice (once per day present) when calculating the daily average unique user/browser figure. However, it will only be counted once within the total monthly UUB figure."

Looking at monthly users rather than daily users, says the article, can reward a site that is attracting a lot of different users rather than the same regular users and has remained the more important measurement.

But, it says, a change to daily measurements could still be on the horizon.

A Special News Relationship

American visits to UK news and media websites have soared 54% over the past year, according to a Hitwise report released this week.

BBC News was the 21st most visited news and media website in the United States during August. Other British sites in Hitwise's US News and Media top 200 last month included the Daily Mail (47th), the BBC home page (65th), the Telegraph (71st), the FT (115th), The Sun (117th), Times Online (131st) and the Guardian (134th).

In Australia, BBC News ranked 13th in the news and media category, and the BBC home page was 18th. However, UK news sites have long been popular in Australia, so August traffic represented just a 6% increase over 2008. Among UK internet users, visits to British news and media websites were up 8% year on year.

In the U.S. market, Hitwise reports, the Drudge Report is the key traffic driver to British news sites. In fact, Drudge was second only to Google search -- but ahead of Google News -- in sending visitors across the Atlantic for their news. Drudge accounted for nearly 11% of visits during August, compared to 13.5% for Google search and 5.3% for Google News.

E-mail also has been a key traffic source for UK websites, including Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and Hotmail. Digg also has been important in driving U.S. traffic to the Telegraph site, in particular.

More than a quarter of the American visitors are from California, with another 6.6% from New York. Forget about the cowboys in Wyoming, though; they're just not into British media, according to the Hitwise data.

Wealthy Americans, households earning more than $150,000, are the most likely to visit British news websites -- but the least affluent, earning less than $30,000, are the second most likely. This group may include students.

Top Of The News Tweets

A blogger has compiled a list of the most popular Twitter feeds provided by national newspapers in the UK.

Malcolm Coles found that just three newspapers account for the ten most followed feeds – the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Times.

The Guardian’s Tech Twitter account is the number one in the chart, with 831,935 followers at the time of compilation (risen to 911,143 when this post was written).

It’s then a big drop to second with the Guardian News feed, with over 25,000 followers on Twitter.

Also making up the top ten are FT finance news, Guardian Music, Times Travel and Times Money.

The full table showing the 131 official feeds and their followers is available here.

Sports Coverage Draws Record Traffic

Preview coverage of an all-star baseball game has given an American news site its best-ever traffic figures.

Staff at the St Louis Post-Dispatch went all out with their multimedia reporting of the classic event and reaped the rewards after recording some 2.7 million page views in a single day.

The preview coverage included blogs, video content, photos, a round-up of the latest all-star tweets and all-star game quizzes.



Editor Arnie Robbins attributed the success to the multimedia approach taken by his team.

He told Editor & Publisher: “We had a lot of cool stuff this time on the game.

“The most interesting was a video - Cardinal Culture - a six-minute video of fans who love the Cardinals.”

He added: “We have the best coverage of the All-Star game anywhere.

“Fans from the area want to know about things like traffic around the game and events, and out of towners basically are fans of the game who want to know about this game, too.”

Visit stltoday.com/allstar to see the preview reports and subsequent coverage of the game itself.

Interactive Coverage For Jacko Tribute

Social media sites joined with mainstream news groups on Tuesday to offer interactive coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial concert.

Live video was accompanied by real-time comments from fans on the websites of many broadcasters – including CNN, ABC News and msnbc.

Twitter was the social media tool of choice for msnbc.com, which aggregated tweets (powered by Tinker) alongside streamed video footage from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.



New product development director Cory Bergman said that the online coverage represented “a first for both Twitter and msnbc.com on a large-scale news event”.

Meanwhile, both CNN and ABC News opted for Facebook Connect to draw fans to their live video stream.



According to Mashable, the interactive coverage on CNN.com attracted a total audience of almost ten million and thousands of updates from Facebook users.

In an interview for CNN, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg talks about her company’s involvement in the broadcaster's coverage of the event.

Fee or Free

Using as a springboard Rupert Murdoch's signal last week that his newspapers, including the Sun and the Times, could start charging for online access over the next year, Guardian Media writer Chris Tryhorn today considers whether the days of free content are (or should be) numbered.

Among the points he raises:

* At least among the major national UK newspaper websites, there are signs that online readership may have hit a plateau, with broadband access now widespread and online habits relatively settled. Even if readershp has not peaked, some industry executives believe more traffic may not make much difference to their ability to generate new advertising revenue. Fees from readers look more appealing ...

* ... But how to charge is a big question. Rather than relying on a subscription model, a solution could involve micropayments – although there is no consensus on how much they would be or exactly how they might work ...

* ... And whatever the optimal system, it will need technology to drive it. `In the same way that the iPod helped sales of digital music, newspapers hope that there is a device on its way to make the online paper seem more valuable than it does on a computer screen,' Tryhorn writes. Although there has been some newspaper interest in Amazon's new Kindle reader, `few believe these first-generation digital readers represent an iPod moment.'

Sidebar links offer additional perspectives on the viability of charging for news content. Among them, Robert Andrews says `news publishers let the free genie out of the bottle – and it can't easily be put back'; he cautions that any publishers thinking about charging for content must consider whether what they offer is unique, must-read information. But Stephen Brook reports that the prevailing sentiment at a major magazine conference last week was that readers would increasingly and inevitably be asked to pay.

Sun Becomes UK’s Online No.1

The Sun online has become the most popular national newspaper website in the UK after attracting more than 27 million unique users last month.

Year-on-year comparisons show thesun.co.uk increased traffic by 118.2%, a leap which saw the News International title move from fifth to first in the order of most visited online newspapers.

The release of ABCe monthly data shows that guardian.co.uk fell from first to third, Telegraph.co.uk remained in second and Times Online and dailymail.co.uk are fourth and fifth respectively.



Speaking to Press Gazette, The Sun’s online editor attributed the site’s growth to a number of factors.

Pete Picton said: “It’s a combination of things - great stories, great content, increased promotional activity and increased site optimization.”

“If you’ve got great content, it’s being linked to by a lot more places than it was,” he added, in reference to the site’s increase in referrals from social media sites like Digg.

Picton also pointed out that the user-generated content zone MySun and the Sun Woman section of the site saw record traffic last month.



Several high-profile stories also helped thesun.co.uk to break web traffic records, including the exclusive about an alleged baby-faced dad and the ‘bong’ photo of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps.

Read more about this story on guardian.co.uk.

[Graph from Press Gazette]

New Business Model Is PEJ Focus

The state of journalism in all its forms is laid bare in this year’s annual report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

An introduction to The State of the News Media 2009 highlights the main area of concern making its presence felt time and time again throughout the extensive study – “the revenue problem”.

This is attributed to two things that happened during the course of 2008:

“First, the hastening audience migration to the Web means the news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought - even if most of those people are going to traditional news destinations.

“At least in the short run, a bigger online audience has worsened things for legacy news sites, not helped them.”

Secondly, and unsurprisingly, it’s the effect of the global economic downturn and its consequence for journalism:

“The numbers are only guesses, but executives estimate that the recession at least doubled the revenue losses in the news industry in 2008, perhaps more in network television.

“Even more important, it swamped most of the efforts at finding new sources of revenue.

“In trying to reinvent the business, 2008 may have been a lost year, and 2009 threatens to be the same.”

This sixth edition of the annual report is available online and includes a study of citizen media websites, a section devoted to coverage of the presidential election, content analysis of the news of 2008 and features on new revenue models.

Web Stats Show Traffic Loss For Locals

Many regional news websites saw traffic fall during the second half of 2008, new figures show.

According to The Guardian, the first audited data report of its kind showed a significant number of regional newspaper websites from six of the UK’s biggest publishers saw average monthly traffic figures drop in the latter part of last year.

This is in contrast to web traffic coming to the UK’s national newspaper websites, which reached new highs in October last year and continued the trend into 2009.

Published by ABC, the regional news website reports will now be released every six months and made available online to members.

Baby-Faced Dad Tale Breaks Web Records

A story about a 13-year-old father has become the most visited article in The Sun’s online history.

Press Gazette reports that the newspaper’s story about baby-faced Alfie Patten drew a record-breaking total of 8.8 million unique users during the “phenomenal” week, The Sun claims.

The tabloid states that almost 4 million unique users visited the website on the day the story was posted – another record for TheSun.co.uk.

An exclusive video piece accompanying the story also became the most viewed video ever posted on the site after it recorded over 1 million unique views.

“Video is integral to our news operation, with journalists equipped to capture stories as they unfold,” said Pete Picton, online editor at The Sun.

He added: “Worldwide TV stations clambered for the video footage, while rival media followed the story using our front page.”

Top Twitter Tips

A blogger has produced a handy guide to help people find their way around the microblogging platform of the moment – Twitter.

James Dickey says his Ten Commandments of Twitter are designed to help users get the most out of the social networking tool.

And here are a few of his tips:

* Set Your Twitter Target

This is the key issue according to Dickey since “everything else you do - or don’t do - in the rest of the commandments depends on this”.

He notes: “The handle, picture, bio, who you follow and how you follow back, might all be different if you wanted to promote your ad agency vs. raising awareness for the plight of the almost-extinct blue-tailed pigeon fish.”

* Select Your Twitter Options

Your needs may be served by selected options rather than default settings so Dickey recommends considering your choices.

Options can include sending and receiving tweets via a mobile phone and getting email notifications of updates.

And Dickey warns against stopping non-followers reading your posts: “It’s the Twitter equivalent of walking into a room and asking everyone else who’s already there to put on earplugs while you talk to the three people you like the most.”

Instead, he advises you should “assume everyone else is just another nice person like yourself looking for a new outlet to reach whatever goal they selected”.

* Link To Your Website

Every Twitter profile enables the user to place a link to their website, blog etc and Dickey urges Twitterers to make use of it as a potential traffic driver.

* Connect Twitter To Other Social Media

Dickey uses the example of Facebook, where users can install an application which automatically takes new message tweets and runs them as status updates.

* Find Some Followers

To establish a presence on Twitter and attract followers, Dickey recommends following very popular users and writing replies to their tweets to encourage them to follow you back.

* Write Something!

“It’s only 140 characters. It doesn’t need an outline, multiple drafts, or an editor (hopefully).

“Look at what your purpose was and talk about it. Since it’s only 140 characters, no one expects the next great novel.”

Visit Dickey’s social media & marketing blog for the full list.

[HT – PDA blog]

Papers Can Reconnect Via Social Media

Newspapers are being urged to go find their audiences in the social networks in order to reconnect with them.

Following the results of the latest social media studies from the Pew Research Center, the Nieman Journalism Lab is encouraging the print media to interact with its customers at the places where they choose to be.


Marketing consultant Martin Langeveld points at statistics showing that more than a third of adult internet users have some kind of social network profile to back up his assertion that journalists need to engage in this online world.

“The moral of the story is, if you’re in the news business, you need to be where your customers are and interact with them as they prefer to interact,” he writes.


He adds: “American publishers: build a social network, a community, around the news and you’ll reconnect with your audience.

“For now, it can be local; eventually, these networks will want to be interconnected.”


For more details on social media research visit the website for the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which features reports including “Adults and Social Network Websites”.


[HT – Editors Weblog]

Phelps Photo Draws Record Traffic Boost

A photo of swimmer Michael Phelps inhaling from a ‘pot pipe’ produced a dramatic spike in traffic on the News of the World (NOTW) website.

The image, showing the multiple medal-winning athlete appearing to inhale from a glass pipe, attracted over a million visitors within 24 hours.



Associate editor Gary Thompson told Press Gazette that the story saw NOTW.co.uk record its “biggest-ever boost” in terms of web traffic.

Much of this traffic came from the US, helped by a link to the article being placed on The Drudge Report.

And Thompson believes the impressive traffic stats support the editorial decision to publish the exclusive online rather than wait for that week’s print issue.

He said: “We judge each story on its merits - and would normally break the biggest exclusives through the print edition.

“On this occasion, we had spoken to the Phelps camp and other third parties and we knew it might not stay exclusive for very long, so we put it up.”

Blanket Snow Coverage = Traffic Records

Online coverage of this week’s dramatic snowfalls has attracted record audiences for some websites.

Press Gazette reports that Times Online recorded some two million unique users on Monday, according to its assistant editor Tom Whitwell.

The newspaper offered extensive reports on disruptions to traffic and travel on its website and also featured several photo slideshows displaying the light side of the snow.



It was photos and other content from users that made Monday a record-breaking day for the BBC, which received probably its biggest ever response to a news story.

Newsroom chief Peter Horrocks revealed that more than 35,000 people submitted pictures and videos of snow-frolicking during the course of Monday.

Writing on The Editors blog, Horrocks stated that the BBC website saw its fair share of visitors too with 5.1 million unique users just from the UK.

BBC.co.uk offered a host of multimedia offerings in the wake of the heavy snow, including this video capturing a cameraman’s drive to work.

Regional news sites also offered plenty of coverage of the white stuff, for example the Croydon Guardian featured a gallery of user-generated content.

Plymouth’s Western Morning News created a slideshow from wintry photographs and thisiscornwall.co.uk used an interactive map to display its readers’ pictures.

And it’s not just the UK that has been experiencing some visually stunning snowfalls, the US has also seen snowstorms which have prompted some journalists to get busy with social media.

Poynter Online highlights the coverage on the website of The Oklahoman, which included a live blog and an open Flickr channel enabling readers to submit their own photos.



Visit Poynter for more on NewsOK.com's reports on the snow.

Twitter - Huge UK Growth

New figures show that usage of Twitter mushroomed by almost 1,000% in the UK during 2008, reports the BBC.

According to statistics from analysts HitWise, the microblogging platform has zoomed up the chart of the UK’s most popular websites and now stands at 291.

HitWise pointed to Twitter users’ coverage of breaking news events such as the recent plane crash on New York’s Hudson river as drivers behind its huge growth in traffic.

But Twitter’s future is likely to stay stateside, despite impressive figures in the UK, as it’s the US which boasts the most popular user – President Barack Obama with more than 144,000 followers.



The blogging site has also hit the headlines this week thanks to exposure from some of Twitterati's more famous faces.

BBC presenter Jonathan Ross introduced Twitter to a mainstream audience last Friday when he talked about it on his chat show with top twitty Stephen Fry.


QI host Fry also talked about the sweet side of tweets in this video interview on the BBC site.


For more details on the HitWise story, visit Cybersoc.com.

[Picture - Stephen Fry on Twitter.]