Now that the big holiday shopping events are over, we used the Trisolute News Dashboard to review the top Google SERP visibility data insights for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and then analyzed the key differences in how each sales day played out in the Mobile News Boxes on the Google SERP.

Let’s dive into the data to see the winning keywords and publishers, as well as the similarities and differences between Black Friday and Cyber Monday when it came to Mobile News Box keyword visibility rankings.

Keyword Analysis

Black Friday

Total Mobile News Box keyword rankings: 6,263

Cyber Monday

Total keyword rankings: 2,734

Keyword Takeaways

Three Apple-related keywords made the top 10 on Black Friday, but overall, Cyber Monday’s top keywords included more direct brand mentions. Year over year, we see Apple-related keywords be top performers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Beyond that, whatever the hot gaming device of the year is, such as “nintendo switch 2.” is a sure bet to drive visibility rankings.

While “cyber monday shopify” was a top-performing keyword on Cyber Monday, it wasn’t due to great deals but because the e-commerce platform suffered outages on the big sales day. Several publishers took advantage by writing content about the outage. While overall social media platforms didn’t overperform on search for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, reddit.com did lead in visibility rankings for the Shopify outage keywords as it became a central hub for shoppers to voice their frustrations. When reviewing the top 25 keywords for Cyber Monday, 5 of the top 25 keywords were related to the Shopify outage. Monitoring for such issues that pop up during big sales events is smart; in addition to capturing shopper frustration, try to offer alternative solutions in addition to keeping shoppers updated on when issues will be resolved.

Share of Voice

Black Friday: Top 10 Publishers

Cyber Monday: Top 10 Publishers

Share of Voice Takeaways

Here are the top data points from analyzing share of voice for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in Google’s Mobile News Boxes.

• 39 Black Friday keywords vs 20 Cyber Monday keywords
• 6,263 Mobile News Box rankings for Black Friday vs. 2,734 for Cyber Monday
• Year over year, we saw an increase in publishers and keyword rankings for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Here’s how the Mobile News Box visibility played out for the top 10 publishers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Black Friday

Cyber  Monday

Year over Year Analysis

Black Friday

• Increase in publishers, keyword rankings in 2025 vs. 2024.
• For Black Friday, two of the top three publishers (nytimes.com, tomsguide.com) from 2024 remained in the top 3 for News Box visibility in 2025, just rearranged in order. Yahoo.com fell from first place in 2024 to fourth place in 2025.

Cyber Monday

• Increase in publishers, keyword rankings in 2025 vs. 2024.
• For Cyber Monday, tech publishers took over the top 2 slots in 2025 which were occupied by yahoo.com and nbcnews.com in 2024.
• Two of the top three publishers (nytimes.com, tomsguide.com) remained in the top 3 YOY, just rearranged in order. Yahoo fell from first place in 2024 to fourth place in 2025.

Live Flag Article Insights

On Black Friday, cnn.com led in live flag article visibility on the Mobile News Boxes at 29.23 percent. They had the greatest amount of visibility in the first half of the day. Meanwhile, tomsguide.com in second place used keywords like “live,” “right now,” and “huge discounts,” and “can’t miss deals” consistently in their headlines. 

There was a different live article champ on Cyber Monday: engadget.com (33.92%) secured a double percentage lead over second-place tomsguide.com (15.43%). Engadget dedicated a separate article for Apple deals on Cyber Monday, which paid off for them in Google visibility: Apple Cyber Monday deals are live: The biggest sales we’ve seen in 2025 on AirPods, iPads, MacBooks, Apple Watches and AirTags (52.58% visibility) vs their main tech deals article Cyber Monday deals on tech for 2025: The best sales from Apple, Amazon, Lego, Dyson, Disney+ and others are up to 50 percent off (41.40% visibility).

Taking a different approach, nypost.com had success by tracking deals to the very end of the sales event, allowing them to dominate Mobile News Box visibility in the last hour of Cyber Monday:  Last call: 85+ best Amazon Cyber Monday deals to add to cart before midnight. 

Across publishers, top-performing live flag articles had page titles that included keywords like “expire at midnight,” “add to cart before midnight,” and “ending soon” to create a sense of urgency and prompt users to take immediate action.

AI Overview Insights

AI Overviews didn’t appear for many Black Friday or Cyber Monday keywords on the respective sales days. (The results were somewhat different when zooming out to the entire month span from Nov. 1-Dec. 1, in which Amazon Black Friday-related sales keywords triggered the most AIOs.) 

One interesting takeaway is that in the News Boxes, AI Overviews appeared a bit more on the desktop SERP vs the mobile SERP for Black Friday keywords. (124 on desktop vs. 107 on mobile.) However, the vast majority of those AIOs were for the query “are banks open on black Friday.” 

For Black Friday shopping-related keywords, “the best black friday” at 90.91%, followed by “black friday sales” at 20.83% ,prompted the highest percentage of Mobile News Box SERPs with an AIO. 

We found even fewer deals-related SERPS with an AIO on Cyber Monday, with the top keyword being “cyber monday deals.”

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Performance Insights

• As we said in our Black Friday analysis, the same recommendation applies to Cyber Monday: “build content around specific, high-intent queries; combine brand, category, and product language; use clear, benefit-focused headlines; and lean into curated, human voice formats.”
• Pay attention to the storylines that emerge beyond the deals, such as site outages. Reddit is a good place to track customer issues.
• If you have the staffing, take advantage of the less competitive late night SERP on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and help shoppers find last-minute deals on each day.
• While social platforms and AI Overviews didn’t dominate the Mobile News Boxes this year, expect each to have a growing presence on the Google SERP for future sales events.
• Black Friday yields a more competitive SERP landscape, with more traditional publishers vying for visibility, while Cyber Monday is not as intensely competitive, with tech publishers able to shine in visibility.
• Live blogs and articles continue to perform well in News Box visibility. Some publishers had success with doing a breakout article for a specific brand (Apple, Amazon) separate from the main live deals article.

More Black Friday and Cyber Monday analysis from Trisolute News Dashboard:

• Black Friday 2025: Inside the Search Trends That Shaped the Shopping Week
• Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 Search Optimization Guide

Not yet part of the Trisolute News Dashboard family? Request a FREE DEMO today and find out how your articles rank on Google Discover, Google News, and the SERPs!