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
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.
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.
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?
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."
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 ?
And that's exactly the reason why CNN, Fox News and other big news networks are so heavily against it. It's threatening their opinion monopoly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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
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.
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
... 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.
"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.
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.