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Malcolm Coles: Michael Jackson’s kids made the Daily Mail the most visited UK newspaper site in June

Malcolm Coles — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:55:42 +0000

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.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – finding search terms for your site

Laura Oliver — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:12:46 +0000

Search: If you’re setting up a new site, use Google’s AdWords Keywords tool to find out more about what search terms people use. They might not be the ones you think relating to your topic area, so will help you to decide the most appropriate. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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OJR: Search engine optimisation tips for online news start-ups

Laura Oliver — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:56:23 +0000

Round-up of Danny Sullivan’s, editor of Search Engine Land, tips for new online news organisations on SEO. Including: creating standing pages for popular ongoing stories and issues; and discovering relevant search terms and keywords linking to your site.

Full list at this link…

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CounterValue: Sun buys Natasha Richardson as sponsored link

Laura Oliver — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:08:07 +0000

Spotted by Justin Williams – The Sun has purchased ‘Natasha Richardson’ as Google keywords, following the death of the actress.

As raised when the Guardian mistakenly bought the search terms ‘Madeleine McCann’, how much is too much when it comes to search engine marketing?

Full post at this link…

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Twitterfall makes it onto Telegraph newsroom screens

Laura Oliver — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:35:19 +0000

Twitterfall, an app that lets you monitor new updates to Twitter on certain #tags or search terms, has been a fixture on the big screens in the Telegraph’s integrated newsroom for the last two weeks, according to this pic from Telegraph.co.uk editor Marcus Warren (courtesy of TwitPic):

The Twitterfall of #twitterfall is the first non-mainstream media news source to appear on the screens, Warren said in a Tweet, adding that it’s the same size as the projection of Telegraph.co.uk on the screens and given more space than Sky, BBC and CNN on the wall.

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Feeds feast for FT: new corporate RSS and FriendFeed experiment

Laura Oliver — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:08:12 +0000

(Try saying that headline 10 times fast)

First up, the Financial Times has announced a new RSS service for corporate users – an add-on for those paying subscribers who signed up for the site’s direct licence system introduced in April last year.

The customisable RSS feed will be available to corporate customers, who under the licence arrangement are entitled unlimited access to FT content on FT.com and third-party services, and can be tailored by specific search terms, a press release from the title said.

Not full-fat feeds as yet – users will click through to read articles on the main website.

Elsewhere, technology journalists at the FT’s San Francisco bureau have been experimenting with FriendFeed to create a single source of their links, articles and blog posts (it can also be used for Twitter and Flickr updates):

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SIIA: iCopyright previews Discovery copyright tracking tool

Laura Oliver — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:38:04 +0000

Mike O’Donnell, chief executive officer of iCopyright, gave Journalism.co.uk a sneak preview and an introduction to its new Discovery tool at the SIIA Global Information Industry Summit yesterday.

The tool scans public sites, including blogs, for reuse of a publisher’s content. The publisher can specify the search terms, e.g. how much of a match, how important the offending site is in terms of ad revenue, and how the application will contact and deal with the infringer.

A tool from iCopyright, which already handles copyright licensing for the Associated Press, is also being developed for bloggers and smaller, independent publishers, O’Donnell said.

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Innovations in Journalism: vtap – driving the ‘video-anywhere revolution’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:33:21 +0000

In our Innovations in Journalism series, Journalism.co.uk asks website and technology developers to pitch their projects to us. This time it’s Veveo with vtap, its personalised video service for mobiles.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
We’re Veveo – founded in 2004 by a team of executives with a history in multimedia, networking and mobile technologies.

Veveo’s mission is to be a driving force behind the ‘video-anywhere revolution’. The company’s flagship product, vtap is the first significant proof of concept. It offers consumers an easy way to browse, discover, keep and share videos from any source on any imaginable topic on the mobile device(s) of their choosing.

vtap indexes videos from all over the internet, including user-generated content (YouTube, DailyMotion) and professional sources (BBC, CNN), as well as blogs and corporate websites.

Basically, anywhere that video appears on the internet vtap indexes it and it is searchable for users.

To set up a personalised feed, users have to register (which is a simple process requiring only an email address and password).

They then enter search terms, which will bring up results or topics. These ‘topics’ can then be added to a feed, which allows users to log in and view relevant content at any time. This can also be viewed on their mobile phone.

By each video there is a ‘share’ button which enables users to send the video to another user, they just need to know the other person’s user name.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
vtap is a great way to keep up-to-date with news and current events in an easy-to-view format. Because content is pushed to you on any device, you can keep up-to-date wherever you are.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
vtap is under constant development by our research and development team in Bangalore so there will be additional features in the near future.

We’re also working with mobile operators, mobile manufacturers, TV providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and content creators to deploy vtap solutions.

4) Why are you doing this?
Veveo believes that video content is the easiest way to get the content you want on a mobile, whether that’s news or entertainment.

To do this Veveo believes that users should be able to easily search videos from all over the web, and save and share what they find to create a personal TV channel.

This level of personalised service enables consumers to access the most relevant video content wherever they are, on any device.

5) What does it cost to use it?
vtap is a free service.

6) How will you make it pay?
vtap will be funded by an advertising model, details of which are yet to be announced.

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk: Do you know what your readers are searching for?

John Thompson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:10:01 +0000

Online publishing: Do you know what people are searching for on your website? Check the logs for the most common search terms and see if what you are writing about matches what users want – you could be surprised. Tipster: Oliver Luft

Got a tip? Submit it here – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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OJR: Using Google Trends to fine-tune your news website

Oliver Luft — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:42:00 +0000

Google’s tool can help online publishers tweak their content to maximize traffic from search engine users, says OJR.

‘Google Trends allows you to select up to five words or phrases, then shows you how those search terms rate relative to one another in both the volume of search queries handled by Google, as well as news references tracked by the search engine. It’s an addictive site for a data geek, like me, and essential for any online publisher who wants to optimize his or her publication to attract more visitors from search engines, such as Google.’

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Innovations in Journalism – Imooty.eu

Oliver Luft — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:15:26 +0000

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

Hello. I’m Kristoffer Lassen. I’m the co-founder of Imooty.

Imooty is an interactive compendium of news stories from across Europe. It provides direct access to the latest breaking media coverage from the most important newspapers and media organizations based in the European Union, Switzerland and Norway.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Imooty makes it possible for users to compare and contrast vast amounts of information.

By clicking the European map, readers may browse through a particular country’s major and minor papers and blogs in English and local languages.

One can easily search for a particular term across all European papers or simply navigate by the common news topics such as politics, science, or business.

MyImooty allows users to create their own media universe. By collecting and saving the most frequently accessed news topics, you may collect your favourite sources on a single customized page. Each time you return to your page, the news is updated and sorted by subject, search terms and titles.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?

The technical and conceptual goal of Imooty is not only to provide access to the latest breaking news, but also to enable a convenient way to review news archives.

With its integrated search engine, users may find specific content located in several different databases and retrieve them through a single business transaction. We’re also in the process of adding Podcast and IPTV modules.

4) Why are you doing this?

I’m Norwegian and co-founder Blaise Bourgeois is French but we are both expats living in Germany.

We are both interested in commentary and analysis of current events; however, keeping up to date on both the media landscape here in Berlin, as well as in our respective home countries was unmanageable.

So we set out to create a platform that could solve this problem. We believe that as the European Union continues its development, more people will migrate and follow news and current events in different languages from nearby countries.

5) What does it cost to use it?

Access to the latest news is free and we simply redirect traffic to the newspapers. As mentioned, also archived news will be searchable on the platform and such content will be displayed in the same format as the latest news (headline with a teaser text below it). Access to this information is a premium feature.

6) How will you make it pay?

Our business model is based on a combination of sales commission and advertising revenue.

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Yahoo goes global with news mapping

Laura Oliver — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:55:57 +0000

Yahoo has combined its RSS feed of top news stories with a geo-encoding function of Yahoo Maps to create the Newsglobe (screenshot below). Fairly self-explanatory, it’s updated every few minutes and indicates the ranking of the news story by the size of the red bar plotting the story.

A ccording to the developer’s blog, the globe could be adapted to show feeds of news by location or defined by specific search terms

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God, no? Is it list and predictions time already?

Oliver Luft — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:37:06 +0000

Yes, it’s that time again, the season of favourites lists, bests of, highlights of 2007, and rough guesses of what may happen in the coming 12 months.

I’ve brought together the few lists I have managed to find in between crazed bouts of gorging my way through East Sussex’s entire supply of mince pies and crapulent afternoons spent selecting the wine for the Christmas party (finally decided on Blue Nun – half bottles).

For what it’s worth, my predictions for the next 12 months are a pocket-sized Second Life for the Asian market, Google car insurance and marriage counselling by April and some kind of Granny app for Facebook so you can check on the vital signs of elderly relatives.

Best journalism film of all time, bar none – cue ‘no, this is better,’….’no, this one,’
Regret the Year. Twelve-months of comical mistakes brought to you by Regret the Error
Yahoo!’s list of the year – favourite sites and causes on the web in 2007
US news source of the year – by top ranking stories on Google News
Top ten search terms of the year
The Jeff Jarvis list of stuff from 2007
Internet TV, 2007, a year in review
Guardian predictions for 2008
Press Gazette twitters from journalists about what they learned from 2007
Shane Richmond’s review of the year in webby tech, month by month

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OMG – it’s Omgili

Laura Oliver — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:33:26 +0000

Approaching its first birthday is “subjective” search engine Omgili, which aims to give users ‘consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions’ in response to search terms.

It works by crawling over 100,000 boards, forums and other discussion groups and is clever enough to differentiate between discussion entities such as topic, title, replies and discussion date.

Here’s the results for a Journalism.co.uk hot topic of the week – widgets:

Not a completely scientific study, it’s true, but a rather neat graphic. You can compare the ‘chatter’ of up to five search terms and plot them over three days, seven days or a month.

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