Half of Google News Users Browse But Don't Click

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the International Business Times: "Nearly half of the users of Google News skim the headlines at the news aggregator site without clicking through to the publisher, according to new research. ... Outsell analyst Ken Doctor said in a statement that 'among the aggregators, Google's effect on the newspaper industry is particularly striking.' 'Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it's also taking a significant share away," Doctor said. 'A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers' individual sites.' ... With a number of US newspaper owners considering charging online, Outlook found that only 10 percent of those surveyed would be willing to pay for a print newspaper subscription to gain online access."

Re:Slashdot did it first

[ls671]

> So the newspapers are finally realizing what Slashdotters have known for 10 years -- nobody RTFA

The only problems with this if that, like on Slashdot, the titles are sometimes misleading. It occurred to me several times that I found points in the article that contradicted the newspaper title ;-)

In newspapers, the title is often chosen by another person than the writer, mostly for marketing reasons I would assume.

So in the end, we end up with people being misinformed on some topics ;-(

At least /. got a lot of comments which usually contribute to fix misleading titles for people who do not read the TFA. ;-)

The death of traditional news

[terraformer]

This has been a long time coming. The key to survival will be those papers who know how to adapt. The WSJ has adapted under one model successfully. The NYT will fail if they pick up the WSJ model, though some similarities may work. What will end up happening is sites that provide free news will be doing it as a loss leader for other content. That news though will be vapid and likely filled with advertising bias and other impurities. Those behind larger pay walls like the NYT, Salon, etc will find limited niche markets of those wanting more substance in their news reporting.

I think Google News

[amRadioHed]

may hurt some of the big sites but most sites are probably helped out. I visit the CNN homepage less since Google News came out, but there are dozens of other sites that I've visited that would never have heard of if they didn't show up on Google News.

Re:Not that bad

[Opportunist]

Cheat back. Use a browser that lets you identify yourself as Googlebot.

Reaction: My two cents on contemporary news

[dogeatery]

First off, that 50% is a fantastic click-thru rate, though I'm sure they'll find a way to make the glass half empty.

There are so many great comments here that collectively sum up the news industry, especially reliance on AP and every paper having essentially the same content. However, I'm surprised that no slash-dotters have mentioned the obvious fact of many "articles" simply being paid ads. I'm sure many Americans are aware of this.

Last summer I attended the Mayborn Literary Non-Fiction Conference in Dallas (and hosted by my alma mater, UNT) and had my suspicions confirmed by fashion "reporter" Joy Sewing of the Houston Chronicle. In a presentation which essentially boiled down to a defense of her paper's increased emphasis on fluffy content, she let the truth come out with the following quote about fashion top-ten and gift lists: "If Macy's buys an ad in my paper, then guess what? Macy's is in my article."

Since hearing Ms. Sewing's admission, I've made it my personal goal to quote her to the world -- please pass it on! People like her are willingly turning journalism into a farce, even as they admit to knowing better. Shrugging shoulders and saying it's "Nature of the business" is saying you don't care about quality as long as you're getting paid. It also makes it more difficult for people like me to get work.

News Worth Reading?

[peterofoz]

Yup, i too am a frequent scanner of news article teasers and headlines and don't click through because, frankly, they don't interest me or I've already read them. I also drive down the street past 1000's of store fronts, advertising banners and billboards and don't often stop to buy stuff. I see 1000's of web adverts every day and don't click on those either (or very rarely). I would tell you what I'd like to read, exactly, except I don't often know myself until the fancy strikes me. And it changes from day to day. So keep spamming the news headlines out there and hope to catch a few readers with what they need when they need it.

Re:Slashdot did it first

[morgan_greywolf]

Haven't you ever heard of infoporn [urbandictionary.com]?

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That's what those articles, stuff with ads and "Prev | 1 2 3 4 | Next | Last" links displayed are all about! I could go on an on about infoporn, but that, in itself, would be infoporn, right?

Condensed Info

[theJML]

I honestly would pay a few dollars a month to have full stores that were JUST a concise listing of pertinent info with no ads or fluff. So many sites today have the article in a thin column down the middle of the page, somehow stretch things out to multiple pages and have nothing but ads on the right and links on the left. And to make it worse, are formatted with screens stuck in the late 90's at 800px wide. There's no wonder people won't click through to them.

Personally I find that a story can be summed up in 100-250 characters and be just as useful 90% of the time. Sure there are cases that more info might be intersting, and links could be given to that effect (like a link to the actual study for instance), but when I'm reading news I'd like more than the short summaries on Google News or RSS feed titles, but less than the full, fluff laden articles. I don't care what Joe Blow on the street thinks. I don't care what other reporters say. In fact, I don't even want opinions most of the time, I just want the story, short and sweet. Title: "Is Apple working on ____?" Article: "Yes, but we don't have any details." Nuff Said.

Re:Or perhaps it is you, media people...

[data2]

I read an article in the German Zeit, in which they described some of the problems newspapers face today, accompanied by some anecdotal evidence which covered most of the bigger German newspapers. It basically came to a new pressure for increased profit margins, which lead to reduction in team sizes, which, somehow not surprisingly, did nothing good for the numbers. A lot of owners, some old news families, sold their papers or starting expecting margins that were and are simply not deliverable. Iirc the numbers were around 0-5% with most newspapers in the last few decades, while now they are expecting 10-15%. This simply can not work. And then there are those that took the opposite strategy like the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which basically thought it would be a good idea to get into speculations. Well, guess what, it went wrong. So now they also have to save the money, but this time because of poor management decisions.