Which news publishers rank in Google News in South Africa?
1. April 2016Today we take a look at Google News South Africa. Which news publishers can stand their grounds in Google News and in the Google News Boxes there? Who has the highest numbers for visibility indicating a possible Google News optimisation? On the one hand, we will look at the top 5 news publishers concerning their visibility in Google News. On the other hand, we will see which 5 news publishers are at the top of the Google News Boxes. We conduct this analysis with help of the KPI Dashboard. As a basis we take the keywords that were imported from Google News – that is those keywords that Google currently holds to be most important.
Let’s start with Google News between 18th February and 18th March 2016. The following graph shows that two news publishers are distinctly leading. Timeslive.co.za and iol.co.za alternate on the first two positions. But we also see that the numbers sway a lot at times. Timeslive.co.za only has a visibility of 4.35 percent in Google News on 20th February 2016, but on 8th March 2016 it reaches 14.03 percent. It would take a deeper analysis to find out where these variations come from. The present analysis serves as a first overview of the overall proportions.
Top 5 news players regarding the visibility in Google News.
Going back in time a bit, we see a remarkable development in Google News. Lol.co.za was not always as successful there as it is at the moment. Looking at the three-months-view of data in the Trisolute Software News Dashboard, we see that iol.co.za only made it to the fifth place in January with numbers around 1.5 percent. It took until the end of January for the numbers of iol.co.za to reach a tableau, and a continuous and positive development in Google News can be seen since then. From 18th until 25th January, i.e. within a week, iol.co.za was able to soar from 1.33 to 8.51 percent regarding the visibility in Google News – which is more than 7 percent.
Iol.co.za was able to soar from place 5 to place 2 in Google News within a week.
We can see another difference when we compare the development within the two time frames. While news24.com, reuters.com and sport24.co.za hold places 3 to 5 regarding their visibility in Google News between 18th February and 18th March, the three-months-comparison shows a change. Instead of sport24.co.za, allafrica.com was able hold its ground on the 5th position. This means that this site reached a higher visibility than sport 24.co.za when we look at the three months’ average.
Who wins the Google News Boxes in South Africa?
The ranking in the Google News Boxes in the organic search is possibly even more important than the visibility in Google News. Who is present in the Google News Boxes in South Africa? The experience from other countries shows that it is not always the news publishers that are successful in the Google News. This also applies to South Africa. While four South African news publishers are present in the top 5 apart from reuters.com, there are only three in the Google News Boxes. Instead, theguardian.com and bbc.com represent two English news publishers in the top 5. Theguardian.com even makes it to the first position most of the time regarding the visibility in the Google News Boxes.
No news publisher is able to go clear at the top in the Google News Boxes.
Other than that, three news publishers that were already leading in Google News are in the top 5: iol.co.za, news24.com and timeslive.co.za. It does strike though that iol.co.za and timeslive.co.za are not as strong as in Google News compared to their competitors.
Looking at the overall data of the past three months here, we see that theguardian.com and bbc.co.uk are on the first respectively second position. This means they had the highest visibility in the Google News Boxes. It is striking that also news24.com, iol.co.za and timeslive.co.za improved their visibility numbers over the past months. Each one shows a slight upward tendency. This is especially true for iol.co.za, which – just like in Google News – has rather low visibility numbers at the start of the year (maybe this indicates technical problems?). They caught up over the time though. News 24.com and timeslive.co.za were also able to improve their results in the Google News Boxes.
The three South African news publishers were able to improve their visibility in the Google News Boxes slightly over the past three months.
In summary it can be said that mainly three South African news players play a role in Google News and the Google News Boxes: iol.ca.za, timeslive.co.za and news24.com. There are also some English news sites that reach a high visibility in Google News respectively the Google News Boxes in South Africa, like e.g. theguardian.com, bbc.co.uk, and reuters.com.