Google News is worse than average for sticky traffic.
Hitwise has run the numbers on traffic that returns to media sites according to referral site. Facebook is far and away the top returning traffic referrer. Google News doesn’t come close.
Perhaps the newspaper industry’s frustration with Google News is misguided. Ok, we already know it is. Google is simply indexing sites (with the exception of licensed content deals) – and users click to go to the site. Google sends traffic. But the quality isn’t as high as other sites.
You can star an email in GMail. And you can star an item in Google Reader. Now, starring has come to Google News.
To use the feature, simply click on the star next to a news item.
When you want to look at all of your starred items, look for the link in the left sidebar:
A page will load with all of your starred items:
The nature of news is that it is constantly developing. For example, we first heard about the Haiti earthquake. Then we learned how its rating on the Richter scale. Eventually, we understood the utter devastation it has caused – and continues to cause – in the Caribbean nation.
Many times reporters update individual stories as they learn new information. As such, it presents a challenge for indexing. Google is addressing the challenge by recrawling news articles to index the changes to an existing story. Many of the updates to an article occur within the first day of publishing. Because of this, Google has set the recrawling to occur frequently during that time frame.
Outsell has released data showing the continuing demise of print newspapers in favor of digital technology. They surveyed 2,787 US news consumers to get an idea of their preferences on receiving news.
57% go to digital sources, which is up from 33% just a few years ago. Online news aggregators are popular among news users, coming in at 31% compared to newspaper sites at 8%.
Apparently, the fondness for news aggregators stems from a desire to quickly devour news. 44% of visitors to Google News simply scan the headlines.
In September, Google launched its visual based news platform, Fast Flip, into Labs. This week, they’ve added 55 new sources from two dozen publishers. Included newbies:
- Tribune Co. newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune
- McClatchy Company newspapers such as the Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star
- The Huffington Post
- Popular Science
- Reuters
- Public Radio International
- POLITICO
- U.S. News & World Report
In the movie Notting Hill, Julia Roberts plays a celebrity who falls in love with a non-celebrity, played by Hugh Grant. When the press finds out, she’s devastated because it doesn’t maintain her elite reputation. She tells Grant that reporters will always reference the story and the photos of him answering the door in his underwear. She tells him, “Newspapers live forever.”
Google’s trying to make that happen with a new collaboration with the Washington Post and the New York Times. It’s called “Living Stories,” and it takes news stories and puts them in historical context.
Google is attempting to appease paid content providers with a couple of new updates to news search features.
First up, they’ve added restrictions to the First Click Free program. This has allowed publishers of paid content sites to let users gain access to an article without shelling out a dime. Google is only allowing users 5 free accesses per day. Previously, it was easy to game the system and access a bunch of pages on a site without paying. (Call me crazy, but individual organizations don’t own the news. Can’t access something on Wall Street Journal? Fine, I’ll visit some other financial news site.)
Google has made some enhancements to its mobile news site. The updates are just for the iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre.
The look and feel is pretty much the same. What’s new is more stories, sources, and images.
A new “Jump to” link brings a pop up box offering quick access to a specific news category.
Any personalizations you make on your desktop will be accessible via your mobile now, as well (as long as you’re signed into the same account on both).
Screenshots:
News.Google.com on an iPhone
Jump to
Google has made some enhancements to its mobile news site. The updates are just for the iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre.
The look and feel is pretty much the same. What’s new is more stories, sources, and images.
A new “Jump to” link brings a pop up box offering quick access to a specific news category.
Any personalizations you make on your desktop will be accessible via your mobile now, as well (as long as you’re signed into the same account on both).
Screenshots:
News.Google.com on an iPhone
Jump to
After announcements from Google and Bing about incorporating Twitter into their search results, Yahoo! is throwing hopping on the real-time results news bandwagon. Yahoo!’s Twitter integration is part of a new update when the News Shortcut is implemented in the search results.
Yahoo! is also recognizing when there’s breaking news and indicating as such on the News Shortcut. Here’s a screenshot of a search for the space shuttle Atlantis shortly after launch earlier this week (per the Yahoo! Search blog):
What do you think of these updates to the Yahoo! News shortcut? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
