What U.S. news website had the highest Google News visibility in 2019?
10. January 2020A new year, another year of news rankings in Google to review! In the past year, we crawled Google thousands of times – so, we have lots of new data to share about the most visible online publishers in Google News and the News Boxes, both on desktop and mobile on the Google search engine result pages (or SERPs).
Keep reading to learn more about the trends we found in 2019 across Google News and the news-related ranking types. We’ve also broken out rankings by category.
It’s important to note that the Top 10 publishers per category reported below are not listed in any particular order. All publishers fall within the Top 10 when looking at 2019.
Now, let’s jump in.
Top 10 publishers in the 2019 Google News Boxes
Fox, CNN, and the New York Times compete as the Top 3 publishers throughout 2019 within Mobile News Boxes.
Mobile News Box
- foxnews.com
- cnn.com
- nytimes.com
- yahoo.com
- usatoday.com
- washingtonpost.com
- cnbc.com
- espn.com
- nbcnews.com
- thehill.com
In 2019, we see four new publishers enter the Top 10: The Hill, NBC, ESPN and Yahoo replaced the BBC, the Guardian, the Verge and Reuters.
CNN takes the lead throughout the entire year, and just barely dips down before the end of 2019 in desktop News Boxes.
Desktop News Box
- washingtonpost.com
- cnn.com
- foxnews.com
- nytimes.com
- yahoo.com
- cnbc.com
- espn.com
- usatoday.com
- cbssports.com
- nbcnews.com
Yahoo makes another gain in visibility in Desktop News Boxes and joins two other publishers who weren’t ranking in the Top 10 in 2018, NBC News and CBS Sports.
Top 5 publishers in 2019 desktop, mobile Visibility Overall
Let’s take a look at some of the Top 5 publishers within different Google News categories for Desktop and Mobile Visibility Overall. These publishers ranked the highest in visibility for the news-related ranking types we measure on a SERP: all portions of a News Box; Video and Publisher Carousels; and Live Blogs.
Top Stories
Desktop
Mobile
U.S.
Desktop
Mobile
World
Desktop
Mobile
Business
Desktop
Mobile
Technology
Desktop
Mobile
Entertainment
Desktop
Mobile
Sports
Desktop
Mobile
Science
Desktop
Mobile
Health
Desktop
Mobile
Notable trends include: CNN ranks as one of the Top 5 publishers in seven out of nine Google categories (in mobile and desktop). And it’s the same story for with YouTube. CNN is missing for Technology and Sports, while YouTube doesn’t rank for U.S. and World categories.
Forbes, E Online!, People and the Verge are all publishers who are most visible specifically in their vertical.
Top 10 publishers in 2019 Google News
Youtube ranks as one of the most visible publishers in Google News (news.google.com) for 2019.
In August 2019, the News Dashboard team matched publisher websites with their YouTube channels, allowing the tool to show a publisher’s full visibility in Google News in their publisher visibility line. This accounts for the sharp “drop” of visibility in YouTube starting around that time.
- youtube.com
- cnn.com
- foxnews.com
- yahoo.com
- nytimes.com
- washingtonpost.com
- cnbc.com
- usatoday.com
- nbcnews.com
- espn.com
Now, let’s take a look at the Top 5 publishers in each category of Google News (news.google.com):
Top Stories
Headlines
U.S.
World
Business
Technology
Entertainment
Sports
Science
Health
Conclusion
It’s clear the rise of video in Google’s news ranking will only continue to grow within the new decade. News publishers should pay particular attention to the percentage of video and Google News ranking spots taken by YouTube videos as they map out their 2020 strategies.
YouTube and CNN have led visibility across the board for two years running. Some publishers who don’t have wide-ranging coverage nonetheless have visibility success in their chosen vertical. And there is turnover in the year-over-year Top 10 publishers in News Boxes – where publishers traditionally see their highest Google traffic – signaling the potential to a thorough search strategy.
If you’re interested in having our team write an analysis on a topic you’re interested in, feel free to let us know at service@newsdashboard.com. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
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