I wrote yesterday that I was sympathetic towards NewsNow and its ongoing row with newspapers, especially the Times. I’ve now decided that I’m not.
NewsNow crawls the Times site in order to gather information for its paid service to businesses.
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I am sympathetic towards NewsNow over the newspapers attempts to block it linking to them. The site has been blocked from showing Times Online stories. But I think it’s campaign is a little overblown:
Read the full post ...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.
Read the full post ...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%.
Read the full post ...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.
Read the full post ...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.
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Anyone turning to Google to look into the cervical cancer jab is unlikely to be reassured. Although these results are generated algorithmically, Google’s results are anti-jab. There is very little in the way of balance in the results, with a mixture of old and new scare stories, and only a couple of positive stories.
Read the full post ...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”?
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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 [...]
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.
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I’m giving up comparing websites using Alexa.com’s data. Checking the accuracy of Alexa data using ABCe numbers led me to believe they were good enough to rely on. But the Times reckons the Alexa numbers in my latest post relating to referrals from the BBC were rubbish – and the Guardian agrees.
Read the full post ...Instead of lambasting the BBC for the “chilling” effect of its online activities, and blaming the problems of online news sites on the BBC “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market”, News Corp chief James Murdoch should thank the BBC for all the traffic it sends his way.
The BBC is responsible for about 870,000 visitors a month to Times Online and 1.1 million to thesun.co.uk (see methodology, below).
Read the full post ...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).
Read the full post ...I recently argued that bundling was the most likely way of Rupert Murdoch succeeding in charging for his newspapers online. And now I’ve spotted that the Times / Sunday Times are already doing that with their Culture section (apologies if you already knew this).
Read the full post ...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.
Read the full post ...I’ve written a guest post for econsultancy, entitled: Murdoch CAN charge for content online, but can anyone else?
Read the full post ...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.
Read the full post ...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.
Read the full post ...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%.
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With 981,359 followers, @Guardiantech is closing in on a million, as I reveal the latest figures for UK newspaper Twitter accounts. @GuardianTech has jumped 150,000 followers in a month. @TimesFashion (29,190 followers) has moved up one place to 2nd, overtaking @GuardianNews (27,802) which is now 3rd.
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This is the personal blog of Malcolm Coles.
It's mostly about reviews (good and bad), SEO, Wordpress, newspapers, how to do things and the internet in general.
