How the top 10 UK publishers perform in the U.S.
3. August 2017You may have noticed how well British publishers have performed in several of our U.S. analyses (click here for an example) – and we wanted to take a look at why. So, we shined some light on British publishers’ performances in U.S. Google News. And if you’re wondering how U.S. publishers do in the UK results – don’t worry, we will come back to that question soon.
For this analysis, we found which publishers were the overall top 10 performers in the desktop News Boxes and for the overall mobile visibility in the UK. We then used the Trisolute News Dashboard to look at their performances in both regions for May 2017. You may be surprised by how well most publishers did in the U.S. results – and we’ll get to why later in this post.
UK’s top 2 publishers make the U.S. top 10
Some publishers make both the top 10 in the UK and the U.S. for May 2017.
First off, the same publishers top desktop and mobile visibility, as is common in the UK. The field for UK News Box visibility in May is pretty tight, with only reuters.com and theguardian.com clearly on top of the competition. These two publishers also lead visibility in the U.S. in comparison with the chosen competitors. Although reuters.com is now headquartered in New York, they had a long history as a UK-based publisher. When we talk about theguardian.com, we talk about combined data from theguardian.com/us and theguardian.com/uk, since after all they are a combined company. Although the news focus of both instances have not always been similar in the last months.
Both of these publishers are also among the top 10 most visible publishers for U.S. desktop News Boxes in May – so do not be misled: British publishers have a significant impact on the U.S. news ecosystem. They likewise both range between almost 2 and 8 percent – pretty good scores overall, with a lot of peaks. In comparison, the best score of the leading U.S. publisher in May was 16.19 percent.
The next best publishers were bbc.co.uk and independent.co.uk. They both start with a visibility of around 2 percent at the beginning of May, then bbc.co.uk starts rising on May 8; and independent.co.uk on May 11. They both perform quite well for the rest of the month – independent.co.uk has two spikes between 4 and 5 percent on May 14 and 21, while bbc.co.uk jumps over the 5 percent hurdle on May 28-29. They both finish strong with about a plus of 1 percent. If you wonder about bbc.com and bbc.co.uk – they do have a similar visibility, but sometimes Google plays out bbc.co.uk and sometimes bbc.com in the U.S., so to be correct, we considered the best BBC publisher in Britain which is bbc.co.uk.
Next are express.co.uk, dailymail.co.uk and telegraph.co.uk. Express.co.uk starts off great with 2.68 percent and is afterwards all over the place, with some constant highs and several lows. They end the month on a low 1.02 percent, but it is not critical if you look at their overall curve. Furthermore, dailymail.co.uk had some highs and lows, but their score is overall increasing, although they suffer a serious blow on May 20. While they start off with 1.8 percent, they reach 3.4 percent nearly at the end of the month – so they make up 1.6 percent over this period. The curve of telegraph.co.uk is overall more steady, with scores around 1 and 2 percent, but they really show themselves around May 21 with 3.31 percent.
The last of the UK’s top 10 are thesun.co.uk, mirror.co.uk and metro.co.uk. Mirror.co.uk and metro.co.uk get most of their News Box appearances in relation to British soccer teams. Now you may wonder about thesun.co.uk. While they do achieve some news visibility around the British royals, their best keyword for May was “sun”.
Other keywords of interest for the publishers on desktop were: “chelsea clinton”; “labour party”; “manchester united f.c.”; “theresa may”; “google maps”; “chelsea f.c.”; “manchester”; “heathrow airport”; “jeremy corbyn” and “opec”.
Publishers are more competitive on mobile in the UK than in the U.S.
When we look at the overall mobile visibility scores in May – except for organic rankings – we see an enormously close field in the UK’s top 10. While theguardian.com is still barely on top, dailymail.co.uk and telegraph.co.uk seem to be following pretty closely. And reuters.com only makes 10th place.
The UK’s top 10 publishers score astonishingly well in the U.S. for mobile visibility overall.
While we have the same players for both the mobile and desktop departments, we have a clearly different ranking. This is the same case for these publishers in the U.S.: Reuters.com is on top for mobile visibility, but theguardian.com is a strong runner-up, with 0.86 percent and a score of 11.80 percent. They both have similar highs and lows, and theguardian.com even finishes with scores of nearly 15 percent. Reuters.com, theguardian.co.uk and bbc.co.uk all make the U.S.’s regular top 10 for mobile visibility in May. Though bbc.co.uk starts the month with a score of only 8.06 percent, they finish above theguardian.co.uk with 11.76 percent.
On the next ranks we see dailymail.co.uk and independent.co.uk. Dailymail.co.uk is especially impressive, as they start off with a mediocre score of 5.98 percent but really make their way constantly up until they reach 10.87 percent on May 28. But we do not want to take away from the great performance of independent.co.uk. While their development is not as steady as dailymail.co.uk‘s, they still get a positive result out of May with a total increase of 3.32 percent.
Telegraph.co.uk has a good overall month, and while they do not significantly increase their overall visibility, they do have some great peaks and reach 5 percent or more 15 times in May. Right below them is express.co.uk, which has some serious drop-downs, but they also have seven incredible peaks over the month. The other three publishers are really close: mirror.co.uk, thesun.co.uk and metro.co.uk all make serious efforts, and one of them even breaks the 5 percent mark.
Top keywords in the month: “north korea”; “russia”; “manchester united f.c.”; “europe”; “emmanuel macron” and “sun.” Americans also seem to have an interest in “prince harry”.
Conclusion
We have not yet answered why these publishers are ranking so well in the U.S. But possibly more interesting is for what topics they rank and what these publishers may or may not have in common.
Although reuters.com is now U.S.-based, they do have something in common with British publishers: They tend to have a more international focus; especially the BBC, which is well-established for their world news. And you will see a world or Europe tab on most of the sites. This is probably why they score so well for international keywords and keywords surrounding Europe.
The recent French and British elections may have spiked U.S. interest in Europe-related keywords. Another topic that might be more important for mirror.co.uk, metro.co.uk and thesun.co.uk – but eventually for most of these publishers – is soccer news, as we see an interest in the successful British clubs. But do not forget about entertainment news – British royals are a hot topic worldwide.
So if you search for some of these topics and more, you might come upon some of these publishers in the U.S. and the UK.
And if you want to know to know more about the performances of U.S. publishers in the UK search results, you’ll have to stayed tuned.
All information provided in this article is based upon data derived from the Trisolute News Dashboard. This tool helps publishers in optimizing their Google visibility. If you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, send an email to service@newsdashboard.com.