The presidential election has come to an end: Emmanuel Macron remains president of France but he will have to prove that he has what it takes to make the necessary changes ahead of the legislative elections in June. Contrary to our last analysis, this time we will be focusing on News Box visibility for both candidates. The key focus will not only lie on the top 5 publishers for each keyword set (found below) but also on what search term a publisher a publisher should use while optimizing its articles. We will also take a look if there is a difference for well performing articles when it comes to desktop and mobile devices. As always, we have used our 15 minute-crawling interval to get insights into all French Google SERP rankings.

Mobile News Boxes:

Le Pen:

Liternaute.com finishes strong for Marine le Pen.

In mobile News Boxes for the second placed candidate we had all in all about one fifth more recorded rankings for “marine le pen” than for “le pen”. However, the users were more likely to search for the last name only. When looking at the rankings we had a lot of movement overall. There were definitely publishers that ranked well on both days like 20minutes.fr and lemonde.fr. Others were especially visible on the first day as huffingtonpost.fr or on the second day like linternaute.com or in-between like closermag.fr.

Macron:

A great start for huffingtonpost.fr concerning news for the president.

Here, we had only 32 rankings distinguishing “emmanuel macron” from “macron” – proving again that Google is still a little more inclined to play out more relevant news elements for full names. Additionally, the search interest for the last or full name was nearly the same with “macron” having insignificantly more interest. Saturday, huffingtonpost.fr was by far the most visible publisher in mobile News Boxes followed by gala.fr and lemonde.fr. The last two were also somewhat succesful on Sunday, although 20minutes.fr and ladepeche.fr more prominently joined the ranks.

Desktop News Boxes:

Le Pen:

Lemonde.fr and 20minutes.fr are on top for Marine le Pen.

Again, “marine le pen” had more rankings than “le pen” with 20minutes.fr and lemonde.fr being especially visible on both days. Similarly to the mobile News Boxes, we had huffingtonpost.fr ranking well on day 1 and liternaute.com better on day 2. Here, francetvinfo.fr makes up the middle-ground.

Macron:

Publishers fighting it out over Emmanuel Macron.

For the first time a last name “macron” gained more rankings than a full name, but with just 2 more this number proves more than to be irrelevant looking at the bigger picture. Moreover, the landscape of publishers was vastly different than on the mobile SERP. Still, huffingtonpost.fr did best on Saturday just like bfmtv.com and gala.fr. Lemonde.fr fared well over both days, while francetvinfo.fr shone on day 2.

Article-focus:

Let’s compare the most visible articles of publishers who were part of the top 5 on both SERPs during the weekend:

Le Pen:

20minutes.fr:

Après la polémique sur Marine Le Pen, Delphine Wespiser prend une décision définitive (mobile and desktop)

huffingtonpost.fr:

Appeler à faire barrage à Marine Le Pen, le dilemme des médias (mobile and desktop)

lemonde.fr:

Présidentielle 2022 : Emmanuel Macron favori du second tour, mais Marine Le Pen à un niveau élevé, selon un ultime … (mobile and desktop)

linternaute.com:

DIRECT. Marine Le Pen : un résultat historique au 2eme tour de cette présidentielle ? (mobile and desktop)

Macron:

huffingtonpost.fr:

Macron répond à Mélenchon qui se voit déjà Premier ministre (mobile)

Ce SMS envoyé par Emmanuel Macron fait enrager Marine Le Pen (desktop)

lemonde.fr:

Présidentielle 2022 : Emmanuel Macron favori du second tour, mais Marine Le Pen à un niveau élevé, selon un ultime … (mobile and desktop)

All in all, there was only one instance where the most visible article over the whole weekend was different for a publisher in the mobile News Box compared to the desktop one.

Final thoughts: