The year 2020 was marked by ups and downs all over the world. In France, among other things, there were protests against the pension reform at the beginning of the year and the Corona virus had the country firmly in its grip. But there was also a lot going on in Google. This blog post takes a look at the visibility of the Top 5 most visible publishers from France on the Google SERP and in Google News.

For this analysis, we look at the mobile and desktop visibility reports, as well as the mobile and desktop News Box, Google News, and Mobile Ranking Types. We use January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020 as the time period. 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: Behind youtube.com the race is very tight

In 2020 youtube.com can record the highest mobile visibility.

While youtube.com dominates the mobile visibility throughout the year, the other publishers are close to each other. For 20minutes.fr, it shows that it loses visibility over the year. Towards May, bfmtv.com became more and more visible, but then lost visibility. For lemonde.fr, the trend was downward at first, but then it was able to work its way up again until October. Franceinfo.fr experienced a similar situation: It initially lost visibility until May, but then managed to build it up again. In January, it reached their personal peak visibility with the most rankings for the keyword “donald trump”.

Desktop Visibility: Lemonde.fr can catch up in visibility

The highest visibility on the desktop SERP gets youtube.com.

A similar picture as on the mobile SERP can be seen for the visibility on the desktop SERP. Here, youtube.com dominates the SERP and the other publishers are in a close race, too. Whereby it can be seen here that all publishers are close to each other until June. From then on, it becomes clear that bfmtv.com loses visibility. The situation is similar for 20minutes.fr, while francetvinfo.fr and lemonde.fr increase their visibility. Lemonde.fr achieves its personal highest visibility in September with the article with the highest visibility share being: “Le président turc, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, menace Emmanuel Macron : ‘Ne cherchez pas querelle à la Turquie'”.

Mobile News Box: 20minutes.fr loses visibility significantly over the year

Francetvinfo.fr can hold its own at the top of the mobile News Box in France.

In the mobile News Box, 20minutes.fr consistently loses visibility over the year, although it is initially at the top. In January, April and since June, francetvinfo.fr can take over the mobile News Box. Also looking at 2020 at all, lemonde.fr can increase visibility. Also lefigaro.fr becomes more visible from month to month, so that in September they reach their personal top visibility with the  keyword  with the most rankings being “donald trump”, among others. Included in the analysis for the first time is ouest-france.fr, which first becomes more visible until March and then loses visibility until October. Towards the end of the year, however, it is able to gain visibility again.

Desktop News Box: Francetvinfo.fr gains visibility in summer

In the Desktop News Box lemonde.fr has strongly increased in visibility.

Next is the Desktop News Box. Here lemonde.fr is flourishing after a low in April. In September it can reach the maximum visibility overall. Closely followed by francetvinfo.fr, which has a similar progression as lemonde.fr. 20minutes.fr starts the race in first place, but also becomes less and less visible in the Desktop News Box over the months. In contrast, lefigaro.fr builds up visibility from July onwards, after stagnating. Also in the Desktop News Box, ouest-france.fr finds a place, but they don’t have much changes in visibility.

Google News: Youtube.com clearly mixes in

In Google News, all of the top 5 most visible publishers from France are in a close race.

After a very differentiated start for all publishers, they are converging more and more towards each other at the end of the year. Francetvinfo.fr often leads the race and can achieve the highest visibility in August. After a slump in March, 20minutes.fr also increases its visibility until the fall. However, they lose visibility again at the end of the year. For youtube.com, the year 2020 ran like a roller coaster in Google News: First it became more visible, then it lost again, then it gained visibility again and became less visible again. In contrast, lefigaro.fr and lemonde.fr increased their visibility throughout the year.

Mobile Ranking types: Video carousels are popular in summer

Last year, the News Box carousel appeared most on the mobile SERP

Finally, let’s take a look at the mobile Ranking Types. This graph shows the distribution of different newsrelevant ranking types on the mobile SERP. Their visibility is also part of our weighed scores. Here, the News Box Carousel was the most visible ranking. Although the Video Carousel was also found more frequently on the mobile SERP towards the summer. The organic ranking dominates the midfield of our report together with the News Box text ranking and the Publisher carousel. Less frequent on the mobile SERP in 2020 were the News Box Headline ranking and the Live Blog. Other Carousels, Twitter Tweets or Google posts were hardly or not at all to be found on the mobile SERP.

Conclusion

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