We’re taking the new year as a chance to look back at 2018 – and specifically how news websites performed in Google News and the search engine results pages in the UK.

All data is based on the Trisolute News Dashboard – a one-of-a-kind SEO tool that gives near-real-time data about rankings in Google News and the SERPs. To level the playing field and cover most general-interest news topics of 2018, we chose to base the analyses on our general keyword set. This set is based on Google News and Trends topics. We will cover the top 10 for the general News Boxes on desktop and mobile and top publishers for the different categories and will then move on to Google News. We will also add pictures for the most interesting results and add a special surprise at the end.

Desktop News Box Top 10: U.S. publisher joins pack 

We see that bbc.co.uk and theguardian.com are far and away the most visible publishers of 2018.

• bbc.co.uk – top month June, top keyword “scotland”
• theguardian.com – top month November, top keyword “brexit”
• express.co.uk – top month August, most top keywords were related to weather
• independent.co.uk – top month August, top keyword “apple”
• dailymail.co.uk – top month January, top keyword “celebrity big brother”
• thesun.co.uk – top month September, top keyword “apple”
• telegraph.co.uk – top month September, top keyword “jeremy corbyn”
• cnn.com – top month October, top keyword “donald trump”
• mirror.co.uk – top month January, top keyword “arsenal f.c.”
• sky.com – top month September, top keyword “corbyn”

The top keywords are spread out between country-wide news, technology and sports. Interestingly, few publishers share the month they registered their top visibility. Here we see cnn.com, which is the most visible publisher across all ranking types in the U.S., broaden its visibility into Google’s UK news-related rankings, but with a U.S. topic in their best month.

Desktop New Box – Business category

The Guardian and BBC duke it out throughout the entire year in the Business category.

Desktop News Box – Entertainment category

• dailymail.co.uk
• thesun.co.uk
• bbc.co.uk
• express.co.uk
• theguardian.com

Desktop News Box – Headlines/Top Stories category

• bb.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• express.co.uk
• independent.co.uk
• cnn.com

Desktop News Box – Health category

• bbc.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• dailymail.co.uk
• independent.co.uk
• express.co.uk

Desktop News Box – Science category

• space.com
• bbc.co.uk
• express.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• independent.co.uk

Desktop News Box – Sports category

Interestingly, only a few of the top publishers in the Sports category are actually sports verticals, with the No. 1 publisher also being general interest.

Desktop News Box – Technology category

• theverge.com
• gamespot.com
• forbes.com
• express.co.uk
• polygon.com

Desktop News Box – World category 

The U.S.-based cnn.com is giving UK publishers a run for their money in the World category.

Mobile News Box Top 10: BBC takes top spot

Unlike any other publisher in the Top 10 for this ranking type, dailymail.co.uk dropped in visibility over 2018.

• bbc.co.uk – top month December, top keyword “brexit”
• theguardian.com – top month November, top keyword “brexit”
• express.co.uk – top month December, top keyword “samsung”
• dailymail.co.uk – top month January, top keyword “celebrity big brother”
• independent.co.uk – top month August, top keyword “brexit”
• thesun.co.uk – top month September, top keyword “apple”
• telegraph.co.uk – top month September, top keyword “corbyn”
• sky.com – top month September, top keyword “theresa may”
• mirror.co.uk – top month January, top keyword “celebrity big brother”
• cnn.com – top month October, top keyword “theresa may”

Brexit is obviously top of mind for many folks living in the UK, whichever way it turns out – and that is reflected in the top keywords here. In fact, “brexit” is the top keyword for theguardian.com in the mobile and desktop News Boxes.

Again, a fairly high number of entertainment and technology keywords for the Top 10 publishers. And that pesky U.S. publisher cnn.com makes yet another appearance.

Mobile News Box – Business category

• bbc.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• ft.com
• cnbc.com
• sky.com

Mobile News Box – Entertainment category

We see the same drop here from dailymail.co.uk in visibility, but they do recover in the Entertainment category starting in November.

Mobile News Box – Health category

• bbc.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• independent.co.uk
• dailymail.co.uk
• telegraph.co.uk

Mobile News Box – Science category

The No. 1 publisher by visibility in the Science category, space.com, is also in the Top 3 for other countries.

Mobile News Box – Sports category

• bbc.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• skysports.com
• express.co.uk
• dailymail.co.uk

Mobile News Box – Technology category

We see a number of U.S.-based technology publishers in this category, mixed with some of the UK publishers who had technology keywords as their most visible in the overall ranking type.

Mobile News Box – World category

• theguardian.com
• bbc.co.uk
• cnn.com
• reuters.com
• independent.co.uk

Google News: Similar Top 10 to Desktop News Box

In May 2018, Google undertook a complete redesign of news.google.com, both in the front-end look and the back-end and algorithm. When you look at the visibility over 2018, you can clearly see that changes that happened started in May.

Unlike most other countries we considered in our year in review analyses, youtube.com did not become a part of the Google News Top 10 most visible publishers. This might indicate that Google is surfacing fewer videos in Google News UK.

As the opposite to the declines we saw at the beginning of 2018 in other ranking types, metro.co.uk saw a precipitous drop at the end of the year.

• bbc.co.uk – 9.27 highest visibility percentage, 4.16 lowest visibility percentage
• theguardian.com – 12.27 highest visibility percentage, 6.67 lowest visibility percentage
• dailymail.co.uk – 6.77 highest visibility percentage, 3.53 lowest visibility percentage
• express.co.uk – 5.5 highest visibility percentage, 2.07 lowest visibility percentage
• mirror.co.uk – 5.71 highest visibility percentage, 3.02 lowest visibility percentage
• thesun.co.uk – 5.35 highest visibility percentage, 1.12 lowest visibility percentage
• telegraph.co.uk – 4.44 highest visibility percentage, 2.5 lowest visibility percentage
• independent.co.uk – 4.88 highest visibility percentage, 1.92 lowest visibility percentage
• sky.com – 4.13 highest visibility percentage, 0.85 lowest visibility percentage
• metro.co.uk – 4.43 highest visibility percentage, 0.36 lowest visibility percentage

Google News categories: Business, Headlines/Top Stories and UK 

In the Business category, bbc.co.uk had an absolute windfall in visibility, overtaking the the previous No. 1 and No. 2 after the Google News redesign.

Similar to what we’ve seen in other countries after the Google News redesign, when a publisher such as theguardian.com is far and away the No. 1 most visible, they were pushed down closer to the other news websites. We theorize this might be due to Google introducing a greater variety of publishers into news.google.com.

The Top 2 publishers in the United Kingdom category do almost a dance of visibility, swapping visibility twice throughout 2018.

Bonus: AMP visibility

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 the percentage of AMP rankings in the general Mobile News Boxes for 2018 of the top 20 most visible publishers.

AMP percentage per publisher UK 2018

The Top 20 publishers all have rankings over 50 percent, which shows a high rate of AMP uptake in UK news websites.

Conclusion 

Read the full Year in Review 2018 analyses

Global Google News trends: What the most visible publishers in 6 countries reveal

10 most visible French publishers in 2018

The most visible Australian news websites in Google during 2018 – and their AMP percentages

What U.S. publisher dominated Google’s news rankings in 2018?

2018 im Rückblick – Welcher schweizer Publisher war am sichtbarsten?

Google News SEO – Deutschlands erfolgreichste Publisher 2018