Media sites benefit from search engines

Posted by Martin Stabe on 30 March 2006 at 17:01
Tags: Agence France Presse, BBC, Google, Journalism, Online, Yahoo

Media web sites are among the major benefitiaries of traffic from search engines, new research from Nielson//Netratings suggests.

About 84 per cent of UK Internet users — 23 million people — used a search engine in January and clicked through to half a billion links every month, the research found.

Although universities and online retailers were major benefitiaries, media web sites also benefited. Thirty per cent of search engine users visited broadcast media sites and a quarter visited current events and global news sites.

In both categories, Nielsen//Netratings identified the BBC as the leading brand.

Google dominates the search market, conducting 64 per cent of searches.

“It is important not to forget that Google’s phenomenal success has had implications and benefits for others far beyond Google itself,” Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst at Nielsen//Netratings said in a statement released today.

“Many brands and sectors owe their successes to the search industry. As innovations in the search technology increase, such as customised or local search, this reliance on search for visitors is likely to increase.”

Not everyone in the news business sees it this way.

Last year, material from Agence France Presse was removed from Google News after the French wire service sued the seach engine, alleging copyright infingement.

The World Association of Newspapers recently announced that it intends to “challenge the exploitation of content” by online news aggregators like Google News. At the recent Online Publishers Association conference in London, one panel discussion supported this position. At the conference and in his Guardian column, Jeff Jarvis criticised the WAN’s stance.

Journalists have routinely scratched their heads about the odd results the Google News algorithm returns on major news stories. The Guardian’s Bobbie Johnson has an excellent example of this today.