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5 most visible publishers for the federal election in Australia

The elections over the weekend have brought some unforeseen results and the Liberal-National coalition under Scott Morrison was once again able to secure the majority in the lower house. Of course, publishers all over Australia and over the world have been reporting ever since. So we want to take some in-depth looks at the publishers on the Google SERP reporting about the election. For this analysis we look at the reporting right after the election – so from Sunday 12 am to Tuesday midnight (Australian Eastern Standard Time). The analysis will be split into three parts. First, we will look at the visibilities for smaller parties in mobile news elements. Afterward we will take a look at publishers ranking in the News Box for Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten and lastly, we will tell you about publishers scoring for general election keywords on the desktop SERP. All rankings are crawled every 15 minutes of the visible first SERP results. All keyword sets can be found below. If you want more information on your own rankings feel free to try the News Dashboard today!

 

Mobile news elements: Smaller parties in the news

Top five publishers for smaller parties in the mobile news elements during the Australian election.

Weeklytimesnow.com.au is a stable competitor for smaller parties visibility.

First, let’s look at the visibilities for all the smaller parties on the ballot. There were around fifty smaller parties competing in the election on Saturday and while not all have been equally on one’s radar, Google Trends still show us some significant search interest for at least some of them. For this part, we look at all mobile news elements, except organic rankings, as they are the least eye-catching on the SERP. Mobile elements include for example all kinds of News Boxes, Video Carousels, and Publisher Carousels. Our score does not only take into consideration if a publisher shows up but also how prominently the rankings show up. You can find more information on all SEO basics in our essential guide here. So let us get into the details. On Sunday abc.net.au had continuously over twenty percent visibility until 1 pm. Afterward, the competition in the leadership section is rather close to each other. On the same day, news.com.au reaches its own best hourly score with 34 rankings total, which is divided between the keywords “labor”, “pauline hanson’s one nation”, “rise up australia party”, “fraser anning’s conservative national party” and “derryn hinch’s justice party”. The best keyword overall for abc.net.au on Sunday was “labor,” it scored 214 rankings and even though they were the leading publisher with more than double the visibility than any other publisher, on that day theguardian.com and smh.com.au score more often for the same keyword. Weeklytimesnow.com.au on the other hand is meanwhile reporting on a whole different topic. Their content ranks most often for “derryn hinch’s justice party” for which only two other publishers in the top five rank – news.com.au, abc.net.au. Overall, their score stayed just below five percent on a daily basis and below ten percent when you look at hourly data points. On Monday abc.net.au loses over 10 percent visibility in comparison to the day before, but ranks more often for the same best keyword “labor”. At the same time, theguardian.com now scores most often for “the greens” and goes from third to the second position. Smh.com.au can also make up some ground. They go from 910 overall rankings on Sunday to 1043 on Monday. “pauline hanson’s one nation” is the keyword for which news.com.au ranks overall the most, interestingly enough abc.net.au only ranks for it on Tuesday. That Tuesday is a great day for all top publishers and four out of five get above the 10 percent hurdle when we look at the daily percentage. When you look at the desktop news elements for the same keyword set, we see the same publishers ranking with just a slightly different distribution.

 

Mobile News Boxes: Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten

Top five publishers for the main candidates in the mobile boxes during the Australian election.

9news.com.au ranks repeatedly for Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten.

For the second part of the analysis, we look at the visibility of the two main candidates in the most important news element on the mobile SERP: the News Box. As you see the two most visible publishers are abc.net.au and smh.com.au for the candidates. Right in the middle is news.com.au and on fourth and fifth position are 9news.com.au and theaustralian.com.au. Interestingly, the top five publishers in Australia have more rankings on every day for Bill Shorten than for Scott Morrison. While the difference is not huge, between 3 and 36 rankings per day, Morrison is not the winner in the News Boxes. While 9news.com.au has no rankings on Tuesday. 22 out of 40 of their rankings on Monday for Scott Morrison are achieved with “Coalition set to form majority government“. Theaustralian.com.au, on the other hand, can achieve some whirlwind wins over the three-day-period and goes from 2.71 percent visibility overall on Sunday with 20 rankings to 19.59 percent on Tuesday with 130 rankings.

 

Desktop news elements: Election essentials in the news

Top five publishers for general election keywords in the desktop news elements during the Australian election.

Abc.net.au rakes in the wins for general election keywords.

For this last part, we are looking at the Desktop SERP. Again, we are excluding organic links, but include news elements such as News Boxes and Video Carousels. As you will see later,  youtube.com links heavily show, but taking out Video Carousels, 9news.com.au shows up in the top 5 instead of youtube.com. Most of all rankings for general election keywords go to abc.net.au, which score over 25 percent every day. The rest of the competition is really close to each other – two publishers smh.com.au and news.com.au are Australian and youtube.com and theguardian.com are international. The guardian.com starts at nearly 20 percent for Sunday, but are down to 10 percent on Monday and Tuesday. Those numbers are pretty impressive though, as smh.com.au’s best daily score is 10.83 percent visibility overall on Sunday. News.com.au has an increase of 5.93 percent from Sunday to Tuesday with the best keyword on Tuesday being “election results” with 97 rankings. 33 of those rankings are from “Election results 2019: Labor Party needs to change its priorities“. Youtube.com always has above 5 percent visibility, but below 10 percent when looking at the daily scores. On Sunday, youtube.com scores 144 rankings for “australia election”, the overall second best keyword of the day. They score about 25 percent of all rankings for the keyword with videos from Sky News, Nine News, DW News, and Dr. Steve Turley. On the other days, publishers of these Youtube channels also show up for the same keyword: BBC News, ABC News, The Star Online, Fox Business. So we have at least three international publishers with BBC News from the UK, Fox Business from the US and DW News from Germany. But, also one rather independent Youtuber Dr. Steve Turley with a particular political view shows up repeatedly.

 

Conclusion

Most publishers in the top department are Australian, but we still have some international competitors like theguardian.com and youtube.com. Youtube.com shows in addition to that several other international publishers, like dw.com and even one non-publisher Dr. Steve Turley. The Australian publishers in the top five also do not differentiate much between different keyword sets and news elements.
Acknowledgments: The basis of this analysis are different keyword sets and the visible rankings in the respective mobile and desktop news elements. Rankings on the SERPs are checked every 15 minutes.
Smaller parties: affordable housing party; animal justice party; australien better families; australian christian; australian conservatives; australian democrats; australian people’s party; australian workers party; centre alliance; christian democratic party; citizens electoral council; climate action! immigration action! accountable politicians!; country labor; country liberals; democratic labour party; derryn hinchs’s justice party; fraser anning’s conservative national party; health australia party; help end marijuana prohibition party; independent; independents for climate action now; involuntary medication objectors party; jacqui lambie network; katter’s australian party; labor; labour dlp; liberal democrats; liberal national party of queensland; love australia or leave; pauline hanson’s one nation; pirate party; republican party of australia; rise up australia party; science party; secular party of australia; seniors united party of australia; shooters, fishers and farmers; socialist alliance; socialist equality party; sustainable australia; the australian mental health party; the great australian party; the greens; the small business party; the together party; the women’s party; voteflux.org; western australia party
Candidates: bill shorten; scott morrison
General election keywords: australia election;  australia vote;  election;  election polls;  election results;  vote; australian labor party;  labor party;  liberal party;  national party;  nationals;  the nationals  

 

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