malcolm coles

Adam Sherk recently pointed out that Twitter drives less than 1% of traffic to US newspaper and magazine sites (but noted that this still makes it “a top 25 referrer for all the [10 sites he asked] and top 10 referrers for most”).

Trying my luck somewhat, I asked people from the three largest UK newspaper sites (the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian) what their figures were.
* For the Mail, under 0.5% of their referrer traffic is from Twitter.
* For the Telegraph, 0.5% of global traffic and 0.25% of uk traffic currently comes from twitter.
* For the Guardian, 0.4% of their page impressions in February came from Twitter.

Tags: Guardian, Mail, Telegraph, twitter statistics

The Press Complaints Commission is on Twitter. It tweets when it arranges for a correction or clarification to be made. Which lets us see how much prominence they are given when they’re published.
Today, it tweeted:
The PCC has negotiated this page 2 and online Daily Telegraph clarification after a complaint from Graham Allen MP http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7207124/Graham-Allen-MP.html
I asked [...]

Tags: pcc, Telegraph

John Terry’s been “nobbing” Wayne Bridge’s girlfriend as one of the edits on Wikipedia puts it. Terry got a superinjunction forbidding publication of this story – and of the fact that there was an injunction. This all fell apart on Friday. The case raises some interesting issues:

Despite the superinjunction, you could find out about the [...]

Tags: google, Guardian, Mail, Telegraph, Trafigura injunction

UK national newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but the rate is getting slower and slower, according to the latest figures for the 129 accounts I’m tracking. November to December growth was just 6.6%, down from 17% earlier in the year.

Tags: FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, newspapers on twitter, Sun, Telegraph, Times, twitter statistics

Newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but at an ever slower rate, according to the latest figures for the 130 accounts I’m tracking. October to November growth was just 8.3%.

Tags: FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, newspapers on twitter, Sun, Telegraph, Times, twitter statistics

June 2009 saw the Mail Online unexpectedly overtake both the Guardian and Telegraph in the ABCes, partly on the back of US traffic and Michael Jackson stories.

Fast forward to September and the story is the same as earlier in the year – Guardian first, Telegraph second and Mail third. So what’s changed? To find out, I’ve compared the ABCe figures for UK and foreign visitors in June and in September. The difference between the Guardian’s performance and that of the Telegraph and Mail is revealing.

Tags: ABCe, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

National UK newspapers had 1,665,202 followers of their Twitter accounts at the start of October – an increase of 193,266 on September 1st (when they had 1,471,936).

The rate of growth has slowed, however. This is a monthly increase of 13.1%, compared with 17% from August 1 to September 1, and also from July 1 to August 1.

Tags: Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, newspapers on twitter, Sun, Telegraph, Times, twitter statistics

I posted yesterday about the shameful reporting of the tragic death of a girl who died on the same day as getting the cervical cancer vaccine – and how, without any evidence of a link, the papers were giving the impression that the vaccine, which will save hundreds of lives a year, is unsafe.

So, how are the papers covering the news that, as the BBC news site puts it in its 3rd most important story “Cancer jab ‘unlikely’ death cause: A girl who died shortly after being given a cervical cancer vaccine had a ’serious underlying medical condition’, an NHS Trust says”?

Tags: cervical cancer jab, Express, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

The UK media have learned nothing from the debacle over the MMR vaccine – where they relentlessly covered stories doubting the safety of MMR, putting the lives of children at risk.
They are continuing their habit of undermining public-health initiatives with their latest scare story about the safety of the cervical cancer jab, after the tragic [...]

Tags: cervical cancer jab, Express, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

Patrick Swayze has died. So has Keith Floyd.

So no surprise that UK newspapers are rushing to publish as many news stories as they can on the subject to try to appear multiple times in the news and web search results, even if some of the pages are very similar.

Tags: Guardian, Mail, seo, Telegraph

Google’s logo over the weekend showed one of its Os being abducted by aliens, triggering an SEO scrap among UK newspapers, which the Telegraph won.

Tags: google, Guardian, Mail, seo, Telegraph

Digg has started nofollowing links below a certain threshold of popularity. From a quick hunt around, I reckon it’s somewhere above 200 Diggs. However, some sites appear to be trusted and need fewer. Other sites need more.

Tags: Digg, seo, Telegraph

National UK newspaper accounts had 1,471,936 followers at the start of September, an increase of 213,892 or 17% on August 1 (when they had 1,258,044 followers).

You can see the September figures in the table.

Tags: Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, newspapers on twitter, Sun, Telegraph, Times, twitter statistics

The Guardian has more bookmarks on Delicious than any other UK newspaper according to Quarkbase. There are nearly 11,000 bookmarks for the Guardian, with the Times in 2nd (3,944) and the Independent 3rd (3,196).

Tags: Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

Can’t decide whether to watch a film? If you’re searching online for a current film review, the Telegraph is winning the SEO battle.

Tags: google, Guardian, seo, Telegraph, Times

There are more than 100,000 citations on Wikipedia that reference the Guardian – more than twice as much as any other UK national newspaper. The FT is way down the list – barely higher than the Sun.

Tags: Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

Visitors to UK newspaper sites look at an average of 2.5 pages a day, according to data from Alexa. And 62.8% of users look at just one page. Only the Sun (4 pages/day per user), Guardian (3.1) and Telegraph (2.9) come out above average in terms of daily page views per user.

Tags: Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

Overall, Google drives the most US traffic to the nine UK national newspaper sites – 19.1%. News aggregator Drudgereport.com is the 2nd highest source of US traffic. Next is Yahoo at 5.2%, with Facebook 4th at 1.6%.

Tags: Express, FT, google, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

On average, US traffic to UK newspaper sites is 36.8% of the UK traffic. The figure for the Telegraph is slightly higher (44.5%) and for the Mail it’s a massive 62.5%.

Tags: Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times

By making use of ABCe data, we can check what Alexa says with the official audited data for UK newspapers. As the table shows, it’s OK but not brilliant.

Tags: ABCe, alexa, Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times