As we start the new year, the Trisolute News Dashboard dove into 2018 for 6 key markets where our Google News visibility tool is used: Germany, Switzerland, France, the UK, the U.S. and Australia. This analysis will show the most visible news publishers in the latter for Google News and the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Read on to get a breakdown by ranking type and even category – as well as a bonus section on Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP. And if you’d like a refresher on the finer points of news SEO and Google News, start with our basics guide.

Top 10 publishers: Mobile Google News Box in Australia 

First, let’s take a look at the most visible publishers in Google’s Mobile News Box on the SERP.

Across 2018, the most visible publisher in this ranking type was news.com.au. Their most visible month was December, and their top keyword for that month was “meghan markle.” The rest of the Top 9 most visible publishers in this Google news-related ranking type were: – top month

• smh.com.au – top month March, top keyword “sydney”
• abc.net.au – top month June, top keyword “donald trump”
• theguardian.com – top month March, top keyword “australia”
• foxsports.com.au – top month June, top keyword “2018 world cup”
• 9news.com.au – top month June, top keyword “donald trump”
• nine.com.au – top month May, top keyword “meghan markle”
• theaustralian.com.au – top month December, top keyword “brexit”
• sbs.com.au – top month January, top keyword “russia”
• perthnow.com.au – top month January, top keyword “perth”

Interestingly, nine.com.au and 9news.com.au are two distinct URLs of the same publisher, with 9news.com.au being the news-specific page. Also, foxsports.com.au is the only publisher that isn’t general-interest in the list. We can also see how much international news – especially from the U.S. and UK – influences the Australian news landscape.

Top 10 publishers: Desktop News Box 

Many publishers saw a spike in visibility around June 2018.

• news.com.au – 14.68 highest visibility percentage, 9.85 lowest visibility percentage 
• abc.net.au – 8.46 highest visibility percentage, 11.82 lowest visibility percentage
• smh.com.au – 7.76 highest visibility percentage, 5.26 lowest visibility percentage
• theguardian.com – 5.18 highest visibility percentage, 3.15 lowest visibility percentage
• foxsports.com.au – 4.2 highest visibility percentage, 2.34 lowest visibility percentage
• sbs.com.au – 3.21 highest visibility percentage, 1.5 lowest visibility percentage
• 9news.com.au – 3.5 highest visibility percentage, 1.05 lowest visibility percentage
• theaustralian.com.au – 2.61 highest visibility percentage, 1.7 lowest visibility percentage
• nine.com.au – 2.39 highest visibility percentage, 1.41 lowest visibility percentage
• cnn.com – 2.22 highest visibility percentage, 1.33 lowest visibility percentage

We often see more “traditional” publishers in the desktop rankings, while mobile rankings can tend to include some online-only news sources. Again, foxsports.com.au is the single exception to general-interest publishers in the list. In addition, cnn.com is the most visible publisher of 2018 in Google U.S. – so it’s not too much of a surprise they rank in other countries as well. 

We are happy to say that two of Top 3 publishers – smh.com.au  and abc.net.au – are among the News Dashboard’s customers.

Top Desktop New Box publishers by category

Business

The same five publishers are in the top 5 for this category on both mobile and desktop, in different orders. We have smh.com.au, news.com.au, abc.net.au, theguardian.com and afr.com in mobile; while it changes to abc.net.au, smh.com.au, news.com.au, afr.com and theguardian.com for desktop.

Entertainment 

In this category, news.com.au dominates by a very significant margin, with a peak at almost a quarter of the visibility.

Again, the same five publishers populate the Top 5 for both devices. In this case though, the No. 4 and 5 are the same for both: abc.net.au and dailymail.co.uk. For mobile, we have news.com.au, smh.com.au and nine.com.au. Then in desktop, No. 1-3 is news.com.au, nine.com.au and smh.com.au.

Health

In this category, 9news.com.au takes the No. 5 spot in both devices. For mobile, the most visible publishers are news.com.au, smh.com.a, abc.net.au and theguardian.com. For desktop we have abc.net.au, news.com.au, theguardian.com and smh.com.au.

Australia

The trend of the same 5 publishers continues in news about the country. For mobile, we have smh.com.au, theguardian.com, abc.net.au, news.com.au and 9news.com.au. Interestingly, this is the highest theguardian.com – a UK-based publisher – has ranked in the categories so far. For desktop, we have abc.net.au, news.com.au, theguardian.com, smh.com.au and 9news.com.au.

Science

We have some discrepancies between the publishers by device in this category. No. 1 and 2 are the same for both: news.com.au and abc.net.au. Smh.com.au comes out before space.com on mobile, with the reverse true on desktop. Lastly, gizmodo.com takes the 5th spot in mobile, while theguardian.com takes that spot in desktop.

Sports

While the Top 3 publishers on desktop in this category started at more or less the same visibility, they spread significantly throughout the year.

This category has the largest variance between devices. Foxsports.com.au takes the No. 1 spot in both devices. No. 2 and 3 are smh.com.au and news.com.au on mobile, with the reverse being true on desktop. On mobile, the list is rounded out with sportingnews.com and goal.com – on desktop, it’s abc.net.au and sbs.com.au.

Technology 

A bit of difference between devices here, too. No. 1 and 2 on mobile are theverge.com and news.com.au, with the opposite true on desktop. Kotaku.com and forbes.com take spots 3 and 4 on both devices, while mobile no. 5 is polygon.com and desktop no. 5 is caradvice.com.au. Interesting to see a niche car publisher in the desktop list.

Top stories

On mobile, the list is led by smh.com.au, news.com.au and abc.net.com, while the order is opposite on desktop. Theguardian.com is No. 4 on both devices, with foxsports.com.au rounding out the mobile Top 5 and 9news.com.au doing the same in desktop.

World 

This category has quite a different order by device. On mobile, see smh.com.au, news.com.au, abc.net.au, theguardian.com and cnn.com. On desktop, we have abc.net.au, news.com.au, theguardian.com, smh.com.au and cnn.com.

Google News

For Google News overall, not only do we see a bump in visibility across the board in June, the elevated visibility remains through December.

After the Top 3 ranking publishers, we see there is a huge gap until the rest of the pack.

• news.com.au
• smh.com.au
• abc.net.au
• nine.com.au
• youtube.com
• theaustralian.com.au
• sbs.com.au
• theguardian.com
• foxsports.com.au
• dailymail.co.uk

Google News categories

Below, we’ll highlight a couple of Google News categories with interesting publisher visibility changes.

While most publishers saw elevated visibility after May 2018, pedestrian.tv had a temporary drop in October but then regained and jump in visibility into the end of the year.

First, in the entertainment category, only two of the Top 5 most visible publishers for the year are specialized in this category (dailymail.co.uk and mamamia.com.au), with the remainder being general-interest publishers. And we see an extremely steep increase in visibility for nine.com.au in June, which followed the Google News redesign in May.

The Health category is often almost a second thought for general-interest publishers, and the keywords that make up the category often cover quite a bit of ground.

Next in the Health category, a “non-publisher” takes the No. 1 spot for visibility: youtube.com. The video platform’s gains are not as high as they were in U.S. Google News. Of course youtube.com is the platform Google has chosen to display videos, while news publishers actually create the video content. The News Dashboard intentionally shows youtube.com at the “publisher” level so our customers can see their overall visibility, but you can drill down to see which publishers are responsible for creating the individual videos that ranked. 

Using the News Dashboard, you can read the actual news publishers who are responsible for producing a given youtube.com video:

Bonus: AMP analysis

As mobile devices continue to draw a larger audience, publishers need to pay attention to Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP. Google has all but said it is AMP enabled for mobile ranking types, which are more user-friendly, but of course there are challenges as far as page layout and especially monetization. The graphic below shows AMP rankings in the Mobile News Box for 2018.

AMP percentage per publisher Australia 2018

There is a strong correlation between publishers who have AMP enabled (sbs. com.au) and ranking in our Top 10 most visible lists. On the other hand, we see a publisher with almost exclusively AMP ranks (thenewdaily.com.au), but that doesn’t appear in our Top 10 lists. 

Conclusion