Slashdot Mirror
Half of Google News Users Browse But Don't Click
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the International Business Times: "Nearly half of the users of Google News skim the headlines at the news aggregator site without clicking through to the publisher, according to new research. ... Outsell analyst Ken Doctor said in a statement that 'among the aggregators, Google's effect on the newspaper industry is particularly striking.' 'Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it's also taking a significant share away," Doctor said. 'A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers' individual sites.' ... With a number of US newspaper owners considering charging online, Outlook found that only 10 percent of those surveyed would be willing to pay for a print newspaper subscription to gain online access."
So the newspapers are finally realizing what Slashdotters have known for 10 years -- nobody RTFAs.
My guess is that the newspapers that switch to a "pay model" are going to try to provide an aggregator feed that their editors will fill only with teaser headlines: "The Massachusetts Election" instead of "Brown Wins in Massachusetts." We'll see how that flies when the aggregators continue to display free news sources, such as NPR headlines.
By the way, for the rest of you who never RTFA, the summary above really contains all the useful information in TFA. There isn't a need to click through in this case.
John
Outlook found that only 10 percent of those surveyed would be willing to pay for a print newspaper subscription to gain online access.
The article says the same thing but what they probably messed up is that it's Outsell not Outlook:
With a number of US newspaper owners considering charging online, Outlook found that only 10 percent of those surveyed would be willing to pay for a print newspaper subscription to gain online access.
For its annual News Users' survey, Outsell asked 2,787 US news consumers in July about their online and offline news preferences. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.
Outsell found that 57 percent of news users looking for "news right now" go to digital sources, up from 33 percent a few years ago.
I'm guessing that was a spell checking/slip up. Not to be blamed on the submitter or slashdot editors but instead the IB Times.
My work here is dung.
how many people read or skin the slashdot summary, but don't read the article?
In other news, 99% of people read the headlines off newspapers in vending machines and in checkout lanes but don't buy the paper.
So now the real return on advertising is known. 50% sounds rather good to me.
Look, the kind of person who is content to read just the headlines isn't ever going to pay to read the articles. Clearly they don't find them interesting enough, which isn't google's fault. Unless they're just worried about the ad revenue they'd get from that person visiting their front page once a day? I mean, I guess it would be fair to give some portion of the ad revenue earned by google from people looking the NYT's headlines to the NYT, but that's not what they're asking for.
Half of Google News users not only browse but also click through
Because if I was going to unscientifically guess at the number of times I go to Google News and don't see any headlines that garner my interest enough to click, ~50% would have been it. This value would be lower when exciting news is breaking, and higher when it's just more of the same BS about whatever is occupying the current news cycle magnifying glass. "Tiger Woods also revealed to have bunions!"
What's next? "44% of people scan front page headlines of newspaper in newspaper vending machine without making a purchase, clearly indicating that Seven Eleven is stealing revenue from the newspapers." Noooooo, Seven Eleven is making their product more readily available, and if people aren't interested enough to buy it, whose fault is that?
The enemies of Democracy are
Make them worth my time and I will click through and read them. That's essentially the problem. Let's take a look at the current international news: "New quake in Haiti." Ok. Whatever. "Obama signals he's ready to compromise on reforms." I already knew that and I might read it when we have a compromise, 'til then it's hot air. "Killing spree murderer in Virginia turns himself in." Don't care. "Geert Wilders in court." Don't care about a right wing asshole in Holland either. "Obama's first year" wake me when it's been his third, 'til then I can't do jack about it anyway (not that I could anything either then 'cause, well, I can't vote in the US). "Weapon lobbyist's testimonial threatening CSU" Duh. Who'd have though... Not interesting enough to click, though. "Italy's senate passing 'Lex Berlusconi'" He got promoted from King to God? He gets his way in Italy any way he pleases, how is this news? "Poland puts Patriot missiles to Russian border" Ok, that might be interesting enough to actually read it.
So, after reading all the "news", only one story was actually interesting enough (and could have some sort of impact on me) that it's something I might read. Everything else is either drivel, opinion or just plain pointless.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I must say, if I saw any news worth my time, I might click through. As long as "journalism" continues being opinion pieces and small amounts of actual facts, which are never shown in an independent light, I'm going to keep reading headlines to keep my bearings, and then if something really interests me, I'll find independent coverage elsewhere, and form my own thoughts. If you want people to continue using your services, treat them as if they can think for themselves. We can, and we do.
Change this later.
Their research assumes that people who are going to google news actually used to visit the newspaper sites independently. I can say that I have never browsed newspaper sites indedpendently, but I do end up there some times from google news.
So the amount of lost advertising is probably smaller than they say it is.
You don't need ammunition to support painfully obvious facts. yes, Google and other news aggregators link to stories without paying any advertising revenue. Brilliant sleuthing Sherlock.
Relatedly, if they hate having Google do so, it's trivially easy to get off the page. Why don't they? Because for all their whining, they know that Google does drive traffic to them. "I don't have a business model, and you do," isn't a valid reason to ask for Google's money.
Those two sentences have absolutely nothing to do with each other, despite Doctor's and the article's author's implication that they do. What really matters is, what portion of those 56% visitors would not have visited the news site in the absence of Google News. I'm guessing the answer is less. New result: Google is a net win for news sites.
In related news, almost no one is willing to pay for a DVD to gain online access to the movie. If I wanted to read the physical edition, I'd subscribe to that. If I want to read the online edition, asking to subscribe to the physical edition is insane. At my last apartment I got the Sunday paper for free. I did get some small amount of value from it, but I ultimately specifically requested to not get it because it wasn't worth the hassle to throw it away.
The article has shown nothing of the sort. It's entirely possible that in the absence of Google News that total news consumption would drop.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Maybe if you actually wrote your own content and didn't rely on the AP wire to write your headlines & stories for you, people would see your UNIQUE headline and article and click in to read your news instead of the 700 other versions of the exact same content? All Google has really done to hurt your business model is expose how much of your precious content is just AP regurgitated schlock. People have realized that there is no reason to go to one site or the other, since they're all the same. With that being the case, you might as well just click on the one that looks like it would have the least offensive presentation, and frankly, all of your flash ad laden pages and pop-ups just don't have that appeal.
today is spelling optional day.
Okay, lesse here ...
Entertainment News, nope, couldn't care less [scrolls]
Sports News, nope, couldn't care less [scrolls]
Random Feel-Good Stories, nope, couldn't care less [scrolls]
Domestic News, government officials are still corrupt, stock market is still iffy, another auto maker is filing Chapter Whatever, [scrolls]
International News, emergency relief in Haiti still ongoing, continued tribal disputes in the Middle East, China still has internal issues
Okay, so it's the same crap as yesterday, and the day before that. I'm a bad person because I don't want to re-read a story regurgitated from several days ago? And the news outlets are upset that the recycled content isn't generating revenue?
This has been a long time coming. The key to survival will be those papers who know how to adapt. The WSJ has adapted under one model successfully. The NYT will fail if they pick up the WSJ model, though some similarities may work. What will end up happening is sites that provide free news will be doing it as a loss leader for other content. That news though will be vapid and likely filled with advertising bias and other impurities. Those behind larger pay walls like the NYT, Salon, etc will find limited niche markets of those wanting more substance in their news reporting.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
A huge portion of newspaper articles (though not as large as the portion of television news segments) are fluff, not worth reading. If you can get all the information you need from the headline, maybe the article wasn't much worth writing anyways.
Maybe if newspapers were to write more articles exposing the horrendous fustercluckery going on locally and abroad, making meaningful commentary on artistic endeavors, giving relevant information on local events, etc. rather than living off press releases, whitewashed statements from politicians, and reprinting AP/Reuters feeds, people might be more inclined to read them.
Hell, one somewhat respected (though less so lately) newspaper in my area reserves the back page of its front section for photographs of its readers holding up a copy of their paper while on vacation. Every day.
The very fact that The Family Circus is still in print is a testament to the utter incompetence and out-of-touchery of newspapers.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I can't speak for everyone else who uses Google News, but a lot of the time that I go there it's because I'm looking for a particular story. A lot of the time I can't find it or it's probably too recent for the story to make its way through the cycle to end up referenced at Google. If that's the case, I don't click on anything, and I'll come back later or find the article through some other means.
Just because someone doesn't click through it doesn't mean Google is stealing page views from the original news source.
So Google News, which is stealing content from other news sites without payment or permission, is actually sending half of its readers to the sites themselves? This will probably get modded redundant, but Murdoch is an idiot.
I know of a lot of advertisers who would kill for a 44% clickthru rate ... hell, I know a lot of advertisers who would kill for a 1/10th of that clickthru.
Fine, if newspapers are finally waking up to the 21st century, and wish to put content behind a paywall, then they should go for it. And Google should send them a huge bill every month for referrals to paid content.
In fact, if Google did this for all paywall sites, maybe there'd be less useless crap in the results. Tired of seeing search results for pages that when you clickthru to them, turn out to be behind a paywall / login page.
Isn't this cheating anyway, presenting one version of the page to Googlebots, but putting a wall in place for regular users ?
may hurt some of the big sites but most sites are probably helped out. I visit the CNN homepage less since Google News came out, but there are dozens of other sites that I've visited that would never have heard of if they didn't show up on Google News.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I honestly don't see what the big deal is.
Google is paying the bandwidth costs for all those people that don't click through, so they are saving those news sites some money.
And I'm betting a majority of the people who use google news, and the like, are more tech-smart than the average news reader, so
odds are they have a ad blocker installed, like I do. So these sites wouldn't be all the extra ad revenue that they think they will.
Yeah, yeah yeah, I know, ad blockers hurt site's. Sure, that is true, but those annoying ass flash ad's with autoplaying sound, and those ads
that cover the content, yeah, they make me want to hurt the sites owner. So I run a white list, sites I visit a lot, that dont have annoying ads, are whitelisted.
And any site that runs adsense ads doesn't get blocked either.
And as to the news sites that are considering charging for their online access, well, I am betting they will be going out of business, or reversing their decision shortly
after implementing that scam. Why would anyone pay to read a certain news papers website when they can get pretty much the same news somewhere else for free?
You mean to tell me that 44 percent of visitors to Google News aren't actually interested in the listed headlines, and therefore don't click through!? Let me put this to the test...
"Democrats see Mass. message: Jobs, jobs, jobs" - boring, pass.
"Alternate supply routes could open Haiti aid bottleneck" - just got all info I needed.
"Americans See Economic Recovery a Long Way Off" - no duh.
"Airstrikes Target al-Qaida in Yemen" - woot, bombs, but I'll pass.
"Netanyahu turns fire on Abbas as US envoy flies in" - whattahootey?
"Powers 'shifting to sanctions' in dealing with Iran" - invasion timer started.
"Intel chief concedes errors in Christmas bomb case" - and?
"Michelle Obama to launch initiative fighting child obesity" - by dressing fashionably?
"Alleged dinner crashers invoke Fifth Amendment" - reality TV series coming to NBC in spring.
Didn't click on anything, until I got to my custom filter:
"Twisted Physics: Scientists Create Knots of Light" - Oh wait, this is from fox news. Never mind.
I don't click through 99% of the stories for the same reason I don't go to 99% of the movies. Whoever makes the preview(headline) is way better at their job then who ever makes the movie(article).
This is probably a great percentage compared to the % of people that read the headlines of a newspaper at the newspaper stand never buy a paper.
..news.google.com is still my 3rd best referrer.
I'm actually astounded 50% of people would click through anything. The fact the conversion rate is that high means that the news sties would be insane to cut out Google.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, assuming the stats are all right, the conclussion is... well bullshit?. So, in fact google news users click HALF of the links they find... That's a lot of traffic. Since google news tends to show the same news multiple times. And since some news sites are not worth clicking. And since many users probably did not find the news they were looking for... 50% is actually a huge number.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
If for some inexplicable reason, the news industry starts going insane and declares that they are putting up pay-walls everywhere, then Google could head 'em off at the pass by agreeing to split their advertising revenue from news.google.com to the publishers whose article blurb's are shown for a given page view. Of course, the assumption here is that news publishers could be made profitable with just a bit more advertising revenue. If they are out by an order of magnitude, then this "solution" won't save them either.
As an aside, I'm a keen Google news lurker, however I will sometimes click on a link belonging to a news publisher other than the main one whose article blurb is shown. That's because I choose to boycott certain publishers. I'm not sure if gNews is adaptive or not (I read while logged in) however so far it doesn't seem like it.
Newspapers don't own traffic, so nothing is being taken. Google is providing a competing product that half of users prefer to that the newspaper provides. Newspapers can easily provide a robots.txt which instructs Google to remove them from their news pages, if they think they would be better off that way.
Depending on the headlines and the news day, some of these thief's might come around and buy a newspaper(here is another amazing thing, once you put your money in, you could take as many as you wanted!).
This is no different. In many ways it is better. Instead of seeing only the above-the-fold headlines, users can see many headlines which may increase the chance that the user will 'buy a newspaper', in this case view the ads. The newspaper no longer has to deliver the physical product, procure space to market the product, and deal with broken machines. Furthermore,the user does not get to read more than a few sentences of content. All those costs are handled by the news aggregator.
Of course, if your headlines are crap, no one will buy. And, of course,there are many more headlines to write as each article must sell itself. More work for those that are willing to do the work to reach readers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So.. I go to google news, search "hamburger".
I find all the summaries boring, except an article about the hamburger festival in Abkhazia, which is what I was *actually* looking for. I then proceed to click on that article.
I had no intention of reading the other articles, I wasn't looking for them, so why would it be expected that I click on them?
Sent from my PDP-11
about half way through that post I realized who the hell *you* were talking to.
What research? All I see are a bunch of arbitrary claims made by a marketing company with no citation to the actual research done. Was the study peer reviewed and published in a journal? Was it double blind? How did the researchers handle statistical aberrations in their calculations? Until any of these questions are answered, this story has about as much credibility as anything coming out of Fox News.
Nothing has been proven by the saying "A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers' individual sites." So what? This does not show that readership has gone either up or down. The statement can be true and more readers go to the news source then without Google. News papers are failing on their own lack of content, they are just lookig for someone to blame.
Why is Snark Required?
I'd go further into the sources if I could remove certain ones. Fox News is almost a troll, and the Wall Street Journal seems to be not much better.
Each morning I walk my dog, and I go past the newsstands on the corner. I always slow down and peer into them and read the headlines. I never buy one.
First off, that 50% is a fantastic click-thru rate, though I'm sure they'll find a way to make the glass half empty.
There are so many great comments here that collectively sum up the news industry, especially reliance on AP and every paper having essentially the same content. However, I'm surprised that no slash-dotters have mentioned the obvious fact of many "articles" simply being paid ads. I'm sure many Americans are aware of this.
Last summer I attended the Mayborn Literary Non-Fiction Conference in Dallas (and hosted by my alma mater, UNT) and had my suspicions confirmed by fashion "reporter" Joy Sewing of the Houston Chronicle. In a presentation which essentially boiled down to a defense of her paper's increased emphasis on fluffy content, she let the truth come out with the following quote about fashion top-ten and gift lists: "If Macy's buys an ad in my paper, then guess what? Macy's is in my article."
Since hearing Ms. Sewing's admission, I've made it my personal goal to quote her to the world -- please pass it on! People like her are willingly turning journalism into a farce, even as they admit to knowing better. Shrugging shoulders and saying it's "Nature of the business" is saying you don't care about quality as long as you're getting paid. It also makes it more difficult for people like me to get work.
tl:dr
Because they bitched at me for scanning headlines and buying only a couple of papers, and not buying a hundred newspapers every time.
I also scan the headlines of the local newsrag in the newspaper machine before going into a restaurant. Haven't paid for one of those in the past decade either.
I often read articles without clicking the links. Instead of clicking, I copy and paste the link in to a new browser window so there's no referrer information. It's not only that I'm clinically paranoid, but one of my hobbies is thwarting the aggregation of data about me online. The site I'm browsing doesn't need to know what brought me there.
Of course I'm guessing most people don't do that.
When Yahoo and Google started giving click-thru data for advertising, as opposed to page impressions, advertisers were shocked that viewers ignored most of their ads. When Tivo starting giving viewing statistics to the networks they were shocked at how ineffective their ads were. Are newspapers only now learning that there's a huge difference between seeing a headline (an ad) and actually paying attention to it? Seriously?
Google is on record pretty much saying, "live with it or add a simple header to your stuff so we ignore you." It couldn't be more straightforward.
Rupert Murdoch has a pretty impressive media empire, and he's whining about Google News, but even he doesn't have the balls to add the header, because so many of his readers find his content through Google News. He's trying to get a coalition of major publishers to all pull out simultaneously, so that Google News loses most of its content and the users go away. I just don't see that working though. The absence of Murdoch material would hardly be noticeable on Google, and suddenly his competitors would be getting all the Google clicks while Murdoch gets none. That's not just less revenue. That's a real downgrade in relevance of his media empire as an opinion setter. Google is here to stay.
One thing I expect them to try: The linked articles will only be article-teasers, which all end with "to continue reading this article, please log in and make [some micropayment]." At that point, people like me would just use the mouse gesture for "back" and learn to not click on links to that source, scouring the other related links to get the same information without a paywall. But in the short term, that kind of move might generate a bit of revenue.
So like others have said, the present arrangement is as good as it's going to get for the article-producing media online.
No, what google should do is charge them to be included in the listing. They don't have to be mean about it either. If it's behind a pay wall, then they just don't spider it unless the owner specifically requests to be added, which, for a fee, is always possible.
The question of just who is trying to eat who's lunch would be solved pretty quickly I should think.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
People skim magazine covers at a newsstand or the grocery store checkout, and the publishers must know this or they wouldn't put enticing headlines on the cover.
People look at the headlines in newspaper racks, that's why the newspaper put those headlines there.
And guess what? There's even a newspaper-specific piece of jargon for this: Above The Fold.
Do these modern day publishers have any institutional knowledge? It looks like NOT.
Infuriate left and right
Yup, i too am a frequent scanner of news article teasers and headlines and don't click through because, frankly, they don't interest me or I've already read them. I also drive down the street past 1000's of store fronts, advertising banners and billboards and don't often stop to buy stuff. I see 1000's of web adverts every day and don't click on those either (or very rarely). I would tell you what I'd like to read, exactly, except I don't often know myself until the fancy strikes me. And it changes from day to day. So keep spamming the news headlines out there and hope to catch a few readers with what they need when they need it.
i reply because I like your name, I like the band and I do the same. I actually was very weary of one news provider, The Christian Science Monitor - because with a name like that, how could they NOT be skewed right? Well, I took a chance one day just to check it out and sure enough, it was good reporting. So I did some investigating, and what people told the woman who started it sure enough still affects them. But like she said, the content will overcome that problem. So I look out for preferred sources of news as well as those as I try to avoid.
I like to tell this story because #1 It's really about giving other ideas a chance - in this case it was worth finding out that the name does not make the company. #2 Maybe someday someone will remember this and give a company a chance and be greatly satisfied with their product - such as Hans-G who is now known as Hans Spree?
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
In other news, users of Google News click through to the aggregated news outlets an outstanding 50% of the time. It is estimated that this brings more traffic to these outlets than any other single website.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Half of all web traffic to major sites are bounces... why is this surprising?
Oh and sorry content providers, bouncers aren't ad clickers anyways!
Fucking noobs.
So you're the opposite of the usual user and read the article but not the title? You seemed to figure it out, anyway, so bravo!
That's the blatantly obvious parallel in print media. I can't understand why anybody would think this is surprising or remarkable in any way.
... turns into:
Wow, doesn't that sound better? Not only that, but it makes the next step easily seen: how many people scan Google News? What's 55% of that number? How many clicks is that? Isn't that a gigantic portion of a news site's revenue?
But hey, the stat sounds much more evil when you say it the other way around.
Why would anyone Read The Fucking Article when the heading and introduction/opening paragraph give us everything we need to know...
Here is an example from a real headline...
Michael Jackson's Giraffes Murdered?
(RTTNews) - Bizarre events surrounding the late Michael Jackson's continue to unfold, this time with the death of two giraffes that once lived at the King of Pop's Neverland Ranch.
Ok so by seeing this on my RSS reader I now know that Michael Jackson's Giraffes were indeed murdered and that cops are still incompetent and much like myself don't really care enough to delve deeper into this topic. On the other hand if the news blurb had come across my reader as "Michael Jack's Giraffe Murderer Found - The Giraffes were killed as part of an illegal Giraffe fighting operation ran by Michael Vick" then I probably would actually take the time to read the article...
Who knew that people would only click what they're really, really interested in or what sounds really really crazy? Anyone for watching the "Sanctity of Marriage" oh I mean "The Bachelor"...
Ave Molech Setting
Dude I totally agree. CSM is great and like you I was wary at first. No, the news sites I try and avoid (~90% of the time) are anything belonging to that spawn of cthulhu Murdoch.
That's a bad analogy, because in the checkout lane you can read most of the article without having to pick up the paper, but on Google you have to click through.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Google, in light of these statements, I'd like to make a feature suggestion. I already have an account to log in, preferences to set on which articles I want to see and where they are displayed at for the page.
For the love of god, please, please give me the ability to filter out articles by news organization.
Nothing makes me madder then to click to nytimes.com, read half of a 2 page article, and then be required to register and sign up for an account to read the second half of my story. Half the time, the second page is nothing more then a paragraph that could have easily fit on the first page. It would please me to no end to be able to filter some of these assholes out myself. Sure, I can (and at this point, have) route nytimes.com to a bad IP in my hosts file so they won't load anyway. However, I'd be perfectly happy to simply have them removed from my results, along with several others. Anyone else requiring payment for their articles or "free registration" come to mind..
Please, make it happen! There have to be some Google employees that read Slashdot comments...
One of these days i'm going to find this 'peer' guy and reset HIS connection!
I honestly would pay a few dollars a month to have full stores that were JUST a concise listing of pertinent info with no ads or fluff. So many sites today have the article in a thin column down the middle of the page, somehow stretch things out to multiple pages and have nothing but ads on the right and links on the left. And to make it worse, are formatted with screens stuck in the late 90's at 800px wide. There's no wonder people won't click through to them.
Personally I find that a story can be summed up in 100-250 characters and be just as useful 90% of the time. Sure there are cases that more info might be intersting, and links could be given to that effect (like a link to the actual study for instance), but when I'm reading news I'd like more than the short summaries on Google News or RSS feed titles, but less than the full, fluff laden articles. I don't care what Joe Blow on the street thinks. I don't care what other reporters say. In fact, I don't even want opinions most of the time, I just want the story, short and sweet. Title: "Is Apple working on ____?" Article: "Yes, but we don't have any details." Nuff Said.
-=JML=-
"'Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it's also taking a significant share away," Doctor said. 'A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers' individual sites.'"
These are some whacked out statistics. How is it "taking significant share away" if the great majority of newspapers' individual sites wouldn't have been found in the first place without Google, and thus even the 56% that did visit might not have shown up if Google (or some similar aggregator) didn't exist? Furthermore, maybe 90% of the news articles that popped up aren't relevant, thus I didn't click on those results to read them?
It's a false "loss" statistic because they have no statistics on what the visitation rate would be without the "Google/aggregator" sites.
Here's an example: I don't regularly read the BBC. The UK isn't where I live, so I have no particular reason to read news at their news site. I go somewhere more local. However, I have been directed to many articles there as a result of Google searches, and therefore they have got some visits from me as a result. The BBC can kiss all those types of visits goodbye if news aggregators did not exist or indexers are forced to stop indexing the news.
In reality, of course, we all know the news sites just want to weasel some money out of the aggregators even though the aggregators bring them more business than they would otherwise have, and are therefore doing news sites a favor at no cost to them. News sites are just sore that the aggregators can make money off helpfully directing customers to their business, like a kind of free Yellow Pages. Yes, "Pay us to list our business in your Yellow Pages directory" makes perfect sense! You'd think they would be happy enough to get interested customers for free, but no.
In other news, most of the people who read the article don't click on ads.
I say if not for google, people wouldn't even know you existed.
Unless you are the New York Times or Washington Post, hardly anyone knows you. Google brings all of you "anonymous cowards" together and makes you presentable so people who otherwise wouldn't can see you and know who you are.
To say these people would click through every paper if not for google is like saying everyone who downloads free songs would pay for them all if given the choice.
No. It's thanks, but no thanks. Not thanks, okay here you go.
If music downloads weren't free, then people wouldn't download all that music, period. If they were tangible records, then we wouldn't decide to pay for them. We would return them.
When you create a downside to information (like a fee), then most of us won't care for it. You can beg to differ, but the users will always think they can always get it somewhere else, where there is no downside (like for free). And it's not even the price that really matters. It's the thought of having to pay that is the real challenge.
Or else people are looking to see if there are any new news, and they're not clicking when there is no news. I suppose newspapers might complain that people aren't going to the newspaper sites to see no news. But people have limited time, so they'd only look at a few news sites and fewer sites would get visited.
NM:
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
they make you *into* a hamburger.
Remember that TFA stated the ~50% of *users* clicked thru to articles, which would only amount to 1 click for the ~200 or so headlines to choose from on a given google news page. This makes a click thru rate of about 1 in 400 impressions or 0.25%
Which is still considered a miracle click thru rate for banner display media tha advertisers pay for.
So considering they are getting this trafic for FREE it seems like a pretty god deal to me.
Are there ads on google news? I never see any.
"Geert Wilders in court." Don't care about a right wing asshole in Holland either. Really, you should refrain from reading anything. You know everything already.
The first time a site requests money to view content is the last time I visit it. End of story.
I don't even believe the summary until I run it thru Snopes.
...read Playboy only for the articles comes up: FALSE
And, in this case,
I need to do some of my own investigating now.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Journalists use a writing style that provides a bulk of the information towards the beginning of the article. This report is akin to someone who picks up a newspaper while, for instance, waiting in line at a supermarket, skims over the headlines, but doesn't purchase the paper.
people would walk past newsracks, scan the headlines, and most of the time not buy the paper.
I have Google News with several custom panels open in a tab 24-7 to look at when I'm distracted.
Where it is a choice I click to items I'm interested in in The Age (Melbourne) in the hope that there might be other, often unrelated, local-interest articles there worth on-clicking to. But half the time the latest Fairfax site revision makes that process near impossible. Other times it can be half good.
But I'm also trying to act on the recognition that for political stuff The Guardian is the only English language paper that tries any more and certainly the only one I'd be willing to seriously consider paying something for. Most of the rest have clearly been overrun by the shock-horror=entertainment/ratings meme, witness the Haiti security beat ups, with exceptions like Christian Science Monitor usually being too allergic to any passion.
Beyond them, I try to opt for publications with local or domain-specific credibility like the San Jose Mercury.
Making sense of my Google News reading/click through statistics would take something a lot smarter than their search algorithm.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
People will not pay for the times electronic version. Frankly they have no real reason to do so. We will always have superior news on the net.
... if they actually care about the subject.
Quel surprise!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The miracle of high speed technology is that it delivers today's news TODAY
Confusing whether CTFA == RTFA is irrelevent.
In other news, 99% of people read the headlines off newspapers in vending machines and in checkout lanes but don't buy the paper.
I thought the publications in the checkout lines are for reading while you wait. People actually buy these?
Those can't be much worse (Of course ./ embeds ads into the damn thing). But still, I'm here now aren't I?
I love humanity, it is people I hate
If it weren't for Google's News aggregation, would any of these people have bothered to look at their headlines in the first place?
Whenever stories involving newspapers comes up, the reaction always seems to include: "well, if those darned newspapers would just do more good, investigative work, I would read them!"
What most of these commenters seem to fail to grasp is that good journalism is EXPENSIVE. The well-researched, thorough investigative piece cannot be funded simply by the ads appearing alongside that article (both in print or online). Instead, the inexpensive "fluff" ends up bringing in the net profit that will counter the net loss incurred by the good journalism.
Decline in paper subscriptions (where the "fluff" is forced on you) and a decline in non-article-specific visits == a massive shortfall of money for the good journalism we all want. So although we hate "fluff" (and ads on TV, etc.), it is necessary to an extent.
Newspaper companies have certainly made several mistakes, but in asserting your critiques, please take reality into account.
You mean, like the media used to do?
Carried over multiple days?
The NYTimes is being money squeezed by the darkside.
All of the traditional news media is being squeezed.
The darkside does not want in-depth investigative reporting.
They want fluff.
They want mis-informed, dis-informed, and un-informed
readers, because the readers are the public, the same
public that can stop their attacks on the readers freedom.
Oh look! Britney Spears!
Fucking gag me with a spoon.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Google seems to have a long track record of cooperating with other organizations and eventually learning that whatever technology they provide is cheaper to replace.
They made Android, got vendors like HTC to commit to it and now they're making their own phone instead. They paid browser vendors for search and clicks, and now are making their own browser which is quickly gaining market share. Opera and Firefox make a considerable amount of their income from Google, but how long before Google decides they don't need them anymore?
They make their own servers, OCR software, office software, mapping system, launched their own satellites, have attempted to buy wireless spectrums, built a library, etc...
In reality, they're consuming the Internet at a rate far faster than Microsoft ever managed against the PC world. They throw money at all the businesses that are selling software until the vendor feels the false sense of confidence allowing them to offer the software nearly for free. Then they make their own alternative to those apps. Of course, from what I understand, they haven't stopped paying the smaller vendors for their clicks, but they produce and market their own products through the most successful marketing tool of the past decade... Google.
I love the Google search engine, Earth is great, maps is wonderful, translate isn't too bad, gmail is fantastic. I also love Microsoft's stuff, Windows, Office, Visual Studio, etc... but I hate both of their businesses.
It's a bit of a shame that such horrible organizations make some of the best stuff.
Over the last 10 years, papers have been laying off reporters and publishing syndicated crap, a business practice that resulted in huge profits without considering long term survival strategies. The syndication practice worked fine in print because we tend to only buy one news-paper, but online it absolutely destroys the value of the business.
The only way publications will EVER be able regain market value is to hire their own reporters again and produce unique content that adds value for the reader, and this can be evidenced today by the more respected publications in the market.
Long live the journalists!!
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Disclaimer: I work for a newspaper, posting as AC
We run our website as a business, selling advertising. We do it well.
We run our CMS as a business, selling it to other publishers, who use it to push content to their production websites. It's an expanding part of our business.
We own many web properties and use our core website to drive traffic to these satellite properties, which also make money.
We run ad delivery and sales as a business, and sell our inventory profitably.
We look for opportunities to grow our web business through acquisition and partnership, and use both the physical newspaper and the websites for that purpose.
There is a limited understanding of how media companies work here. Most of the large newspaper websites (100 million PV/month) have these opportunities, but have not developed other abilities and businesses to monetize that legacy reputation. Huge web traffic is only a start. You need good ad sales people. You need good programmers and sysadmins. You need people who can see opportunities. You need to have started acquiring smart people years ago, and need to be better at attracting them. I'm talking computer people, who can automate turning 150 words into lots of differently presented attractive content that attracts search engine and direct traffic.
I'm sorry to say that it is late in the game to be starting on these things. Being a leader in the newspaper business means you need to have seen this coming five ^H^H^H^H^H seven years ago. You needed to have acquired other domains and web properties and needed to have started using your readership base to increase google SERP and direct traffic, and need to be selling out ad inventory based on page view stats that appeal to advertisers. Anecdotal use case stories about advertising are amusing, irrelevant to the business, and ignore the fact that a lot of web campaigns are part of a much broader media buy. Kids, learn a bit about how money is made before you declare you know everything, get off my lawn, etc.
Google is a huge source of traffic. Understanding that and using it better than everyone else is how a good organization should work.
If it's behind a pay wall, then they just don't spider it unless the owner specifically requests to be added
The googlebot has no magic pay-wall busting technology; throw up a login screen and charge for accounts and Google can no more see it (without purchasing an account) than you or I can.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I could be repeating what others have said already cos I didn't read through every post. But when I go into a newsagents to buy a packet of chewing gum or the like, I walk past the newspaper section and have a quick glance over the front cover headlines, but don't bother stopping to pick up and read them, or buy them. Not much different, so don't think you can blame google for people not clicking through to individual news sites.
I'm not sure if anyone else has this problem with their local paper's website, but the advertising on it makes reading any article an exercise in frustration. Hover-ads, banner ads that would make anyone epileptic, links that bring up Netflix popups, and a scrolling ad that takes up half of the page. By the time one navigates the minefield to get to TFA, it's generally not worth the effort invested. If newspapers made their content available with less hassle and irritation, I'm sure more folks would click to read TFA.
I wonder if their statistics include my Google News app populating stories every time I open my iGoogle page without any intention of looking at the news.
Disclaimer: I didn't RTFA so I don't know if it clarified this.
half the times you visit you don't click, not half the visitors don't click. A lot of times the news is not interesting to me so why bother.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
And this "revelation" differs from how one "reads" a dead tree newspaper in what way? (With the one exception that the newspaper publishers could not "track" which articles you read in the dead tree version.)
Here's how I read a dead tree newspaper - scan headlines, if no headline looks interesting enough to grab me, move on. Exactly the same in the dead tree copy as in google. With the one, significant, difference being that in google I can scan most if not all of the headlines on a single "page" whereas in the dead tree copy I had to keep turning the pages to scan the headlines.
So how is this a "revelation", other than a "revelation" to smug, self centered, ego centric newspaper publishers that most pelple did not read all of your articles in your dead tree copy to begin with. You were just living in your own denial that everyone buying the dead tree copy was reading every word of every article.
That's due to over 90% of them are regurgitated AP feeds. I was in favor of AP forcing google to filter out there copyrighted AP stories and was hoping AP and google did not streak a deal. But they did. :-( Would have been nice to have a short list of oredgenale reporting stories.
I was hoping to post your comment before you, so instead I'll add a twist. Research conclusions are often incorrect - they have raw data, then leap to a conclusion which is among several supported by the data. More reasearch is needed to differentiate among the possibilities, but it gets reported as fact because it's "research" and "science".
Alternate interpretations:
Half of google news users didn't find what they were looking for so google news index sucks
Half of google news users didn't find what they were looking for so people look for non-existent things
Most news can be summarized in a headline and the rest is fluff (half of the users clicked at least one time on one out of the millions of results, that's a damning statistic)
Most news is not interesting (half of the users clicked at least one time on one out of the millions of results)
Most people are not interested in news which actually is judged to be inherently interesting
Google news users are a self-selected subset of people who want quick access to information without adverts, slow loading, cookie tracking, flash crap, extra and unnecessary image data transfer
I could go on, but which one of these sounds more plausible? I believe it's the last one, the people likely to use google news are likely to want a minimal search interface and zero clutter. News providers cannot make money by providing people what people want, that's an interpretation based on the conclusion.
Other comments are a result of this conclusion. Written news will go from being important info first with as much data in the headline, to an inverse quagmire of hinting and supposition like the local evening news already is: Something in your kitchen could injure your entire family. We'll tell you what it is, but first here's the weather report and some commercials and a human interest story about lost puppies. That about wraps it up. That thing that could kill you? Oh yeah, our handyman has the following tip for homeowners: Don't stick your head in the garbage disposal when it's turned on, you could suffer damage and even death, and if your 2 year old child tries to save you she could be accidentally grabbed by involuntary muscle contractions and sucked in with you while the dog tries to see what's so interesting and turns on the gas stove which we told you not to use last week and your house burns down and catches your neighborhood on fire. Good night, NBC news is next.
Perhaps it's because Google gives enough info to realise the story isn't really worth reading.
There is really no question that the new way of finding information, including the news, is online. The thing that makes online information finding desirable is that you can filter out the crap that you don't want to read.
Old media such as newspapers want to force you to look at things that you aren't interested in. We can debate all we want about the value of The New York Times, but as long as I can get search results on the particular subject I am interested in-- and get feeds about the things I'm interested in-- I don't really care about the New York Times.
In fact, I have more faith in articles that allow for comments.
That's unmoderated comments. (Not moderated by publishers. User ratings are OK.)
Try leaving a less than enthusiastic comment in a lot of places, and your comment never appears or gets deleted.
This often provides a needed balance on what is being written in the article (especially since most articles seemed to be more editorials as of late. ). And the insightful posts usually provide sources for their comments
Journalism is all about the story, which must be provocative. Balanced accounts are "boring".
In addition to comments, I'd like to see rebuttals placed paragraph for paragraph alongside the original article, like my Make The Case site.
You joke, but many of the free commuter dailies frequently have add 'outserts' that are a cover outside the front page. In the newspaper boxes, you don't see headlines, only the stupid full-front-page ads. The first page of the paper is inside it.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
To be fair, the one liner you get in addition to the headline said something along the lines of "Right populist party (whatever three letters, including one that says Netherlands IIRC) leader Geert Wilders has to defend against accusation of agitation".
Let's be honest here: A right wing populist party leader agitating against immigrants. That's not news, that's them doing their job.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I doubt that Wilders is "right wing". Take at least the time to read his wikipedia profile instead of just throwing dirt. I wish we had a Wilders in my EU country.