This is an edited cross-post from Malcolm Coles’ personal website:

The Daily Mail surprisingly overtook the Telegraph and Guardian in the June ABCes – with more unique visitors than any other UK newspaper.

However it was only 4th in terms of UK visitors. Figures from Compete.com, which tracks Americans’ internet use, suggest that, of the 4.7 million unique users the Mail added from May to June, 1.2 million were from the USA. American and other foreign visitors searching for Michael Jackson’s kids – the Mail tops google.com for a search on this – drove this overseas growth.

US traffic to UK newspaper sites
This is what happened to US traffic for the ‘big three’ UK newspaper websites from May to June, according to Compete.com’s figures:

• Guardian: up from 3.4m to 3.7m – a rise of 300,000 or 9 per cent.
• Telegraph: up from 3.7m to 4.1m, a rise of 500,000 or 11 per cent.
• Daily Mail: up from 4.0m to 5.2m, a rise of 1,200,000 or 30 per cent.

This dramatic increase in traffic, compared to its rivals, from May to June helps explains how the Mail leapfrogged the Guardian and Telegraph.

Google.com was the main referrer to the Mail – responsible for 22.7 per cent of its traffic. More on this below. Next up was drudgereport.com [a large US news aggregation site], followed by Yahoo.com and Facebook.com.

What was behind this rise in US traffic?
So what led to this sudden increase for the Mail? Compete also shows you the main search terms that lead US visitors to sites.

Top five search terms that lead US visitors to the Guardian

• Guardian/the guardian: 2.6 per cent
• Michael Jackson: 0.9 per cent
• Swine flu symptoms: 0.6 per cent
• Susan Boyle: 0.6 per cent

Top five search terms that lead US visitors to the Telegraph

• Michael Jackson: 2.5 per cent
• Susan Boyle: 0.8 per cent
• Swine flu symptoms: 0.7 per cent
• Daily Telegraph: 0.6 per cent
• Michael Jackson children: 0.5 per cent

Top five search terms that lead US visitors to the Daily Mail

• Daily Mail/Dailymail: 9.9 per cent
• Michael Jackson (or Jackson’s) children: 2.9 per cent
• Michael Jackson’s kids: 1.3 per cent

What does this tell us?
The Guardian’s top five search terms, as suggested by Compete.com, accounted for just 4.7 per cent of its search traffic. The Telegraph’s top five for 5.1 per cent.

But the Mail’s top 5 accounted for a massive 14.1 per cent – split between searches for its brand name and for Michael Jackson’s kids (and outside the top five there may have been many other MJ-related terms).

Its search traffic in June is heavily skewed to these two search terms in the USA – and elsewhere in the world, I think it’s reasonable to presume.

Can this last?
Searches in the USA for ‘Daily Mail’ have been fairly consistent over the last few months according to Google Insights. I don’t know why so many people do this compared to other newspapers.

But I do know that interest in Michael Jackson’s kids is going to die down. This graph shows how there was a huge and sudden surge in searches for his children and kids after he died. The graph shows just two search terms – there are likely to be many others, and so a significant proportion of the Mail’s overseas traffic increase is down to search terms related to Jackson’s offspring.

This increase in searches translates into traffic for the Mail because it is currently TOP for a search on ‘Michael Jackson children’ at google.com and 3rd for kids (it’s also top in Google India for a search on his children, and India is the next most common source of traffic to the Mail after the UK and USA).

So all this data suggests that the Mail’s top spot in June’s ABCes is built on US and other worldwide search traffic around Jackson’s children – the massive peak in late June and again around his funeral in early July.

Once people stop searching for these terms, this traffic will disappear. The Mail may still top July’s ABCes on the back of this traffic – but it’s hard to believe it will still be top in August.

Methodology
You can, of course, pick holes in this argument.

The three MJ’s kids search terms account for 4.2 per cent of Google traffic, which accounts for 22.7 per cent of 5.2 million visitors – so about 50,000 users.

But I think it’s reasonable to assume that there are more search terms outside the top five; there are other search engines; and that the other sources of traffic, such as people sharing links on Facebook and news aggregators, will also partially be about Jackson’s children.

Plus this is the only publicly available data that I’m aware of, and this is the story it seems to be telling.Similar Posts:

• Malcolm Coles: How US traffic is vital for UK newspaper sites
• How the Guardian and Telegraph overtook the Mail in latest ABCe traffic report
• ABCes: Independent.co.uk records biggest increase in daily browsers
• How sticky are UK newspaper sites? 62.8 per cent of users look at just one page, says Alexa
• Guardian: Mail website has most overseas users

A US county court judge has called on news aggregation site Topix.com to reveal identifying information about 178 anonymous commenters, who left comments on a story relating to sexual abuse allegations.

The site has until March 6 to comply.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

• Judge could order US newspaper to hand over identities of anonymous comment posters
• Howard Owens: Don’t let aggregators replace your newspaper’s homepage
• Local news blogger refused entry to coroner’s court
• Wandsworth Guardian reporter overturns gagging order in court
• Outsourcing newspaper interaction – on Topix

News aggregation site NewsNow, which includes articles from newspapers, magazines and TV news, has launched a mobile version, according to a press release.

The service, which runs using mobile browser Opera, aggregates around 200,000 articles a day, organising these into 2,500 subject-specific feeds.

Chairman of NewsNow Publishing, Struan Bartlett, describes the tool as a ‘killer app’ for mobile phones.Similar Posts:

• Aggregator NewsNow says publishers seeking court injunction to stop linking
• News International steps up blocking of aggregators
• Archived content and RSS feeds: The NewsNow problem
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – a mobile media toolkit for smartphone reporting
• NLA suspends payment of new link charges for aggregators

News aggregation site Silobreaker uses semantic web technology to help consumers find news that is more relevant to them and offers connections and context with related articles or topics.

“[S]ince relevance has inherent value, it can be the basis of business models,” writes Poynter’s Amy Gahran.Similar Posts:

• Editors Weblog: Transforming the web with semantic technology
• South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper unveils new all singing, all dancing website
• Nieman Journalism Lab: Clay Shirky – Let a thousand flowers bloom to replace newspapers; don’t build a paywall around a public good
• TechCrunch: New site for Hearst to semi-automate content
• Three spheres of relevance for news online

Social news aggregation site Reddit has today gone live with a redesign.

The revamp appears to make parts of the site more visible to its users by bringing some features to its navigation bar that weren’t there previously.

Most controversial news – those getting good and bad reviews – has been moved here to make it easier to access.

Links for creating your own Reddit and submitting links are also easier to find.

Users can now easily customise the site by selecting topics they want to have on their own home page.Similar Posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – there’s still a good reason to print out copy
• Guardian releases football data; BBC creates gossip widget
• New US local paper paywall divides readership
• Independent and USA Today launch headline apps
• Howard Owens: Don’t let aggregators replace your newspaper’s homepage