The past year had many ups and downs and was truly unique. This was also the case for the top 5 most visible UK publishers on the Google SERP and in Google News. In this article we will go into more detail.

For this analysis, we look at the top 5 most visible UK publishers from January 1st to December 31st, 2020. Those are the reports we will focus on: Mobile Visibility Overall, Desktop Visibility Overall, Mobile News Box, Desktop News Box, Google News and Mobile Ranking Types. Everything is based on our general keywordset which gives a snapshot of currently relevant newstopics from Google’s perspective and our weighed visibility, which takes not only the number of appearances, but also the visibility of the rankings into consideration. For some publishers we added their youtuberankings’ visibility to their respective scores. For all other youtubers and publishers the rankings were accumulated as the score for youtube.com to avoid wrong allocations. But seeing the visibility for most youtube rankings together – no matter the contributor – gives an idea about the importance of youtube.com for Google.

Mobile Visibility: youtube.com takes the lead

In the UK, youtube.com was very visible on the  mobile SERP in 2020.

For almost the entire year 2020, youtube.com was able to maintain the top visibility and even reached the maximum visibility in July. Only in January was bbc.co.uk able to take the lead. After that, bbc.co.uk and theguardian.com had a tough race. Also very close were dailymail.co.uk and express.co.uk. Whereas dailymail.co.uk was able to pull away in autumn and reach its personal top visibility in October with the most visible article being:“British Royals were ‘hopping mad’ over Meghan and Harry’s move, says a devastating new book”.

Desktop Visibility: theguardian.com catches up

In 2020, theguardian.com and bbc.co.uk had a race on the desktop SERP.

In terms of desktop visibility, it initially looks as if youtube.com is unbeatable again, but its visibility collapses from February onwards. There, the visibility of theguardian.com increases. Theguardian.com and bbc.co.uk then come closer and closer to each other in terms of visibility over the next few months. However, bbc.co.uk is able to maintain and even increase its visibility, so that in December they are more visible than youtube.com. They achieved this with the keyword “covid”. For dailymail.co.uk, 2020 is looking good on the desktop SERP: They can maintain and even increase their visibility until October. However, they lose some visibility in the last two months. For express.co.uk it looks similar. Initially, they are able to maintain their desktop visibility, but lose some visibility from May onwards.

Mobile News Box: bbc.co.uk can hold on to the top – almost non-stop

In the mobile News Box, bbc.co.uk can hold on to the top spot.

In the mobile News Box, bbc.co.uk and theguaradian.com are in a race from April onwards, as theguardian.com became more visible in the first few months. However, it then also had a dip in visibility. In December, it achieved its personal top visibility with the most visible article being “More Biden cabinet picks emerge as McConnell acknowledges victory – as it happened”. Also close to each other are dailymail.co.uk and express.co.uk. From April onwards, sky.com also joins the race.

Desktop News Box: the most visibility is given to bbc.co.uk

In the Desktop News Box, theguardian.com can significantly increase its visibility in the second half of the year.

The Desktop News Box provides a somewhat different picture. Here, bbc.co.uk is able to take the lead. However, theguardian.com follows bbc.co.uk closely. The midfield is dominated by dailymailc.o.uk, which achieved its personal highest visibility in October with the keyword “donald trump”, among others. As of April, express.co.uk and sky.com are getting closer in visibility. However, sky.com can increase its visibility over 2020 in such a way that they overtake express.com from September.

Google News: dailymail.co.uk becomes visible at the end of the year

The publisher mirror.co.uk appears in Google News for the first time in this analysis.

In Google News, mirror.co.uk enters the race for the first time and has a close race with express.co.uk. Also close for now are theguardian.com and dailymail.co.uk. However, dailymail.co.uk greatly increases its visibility from August. This allows it to overtake bbc.co.uk, which previously led the pack, from September onwards. In May, bbc.co.uk had a slump after a strong visibility, but they were able to make up for it in the summer. However, it could not maintain this high visibility and fell back to third place at the end of the year.

Mobile Ranking Types: News Box Carousel appears most frequently

News Box Carousel was the most common mobile ranking type on mobile SERP in UK in 2020.

This graph shows the distribution of different newsrelevant ranking types on the mobile SERP. Their visibility is also part of our weighed scores. The mobile ranking types show that the News Box carousel frequently appeared on the SERP. Towards June, however, the video carousel also appeared more frequently. In the midfield, the News Box text ranking, the Publisher carousel and the organic ranking remain constant. In the lower field are the News Box Headline Ranking and the Live Blog. The ranking types Google Post, other carousels and Twitter Tweets hardly or not at all appear on the SERP.

Conclusion

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