Newspapers had online lead, what happened?

May/June, 2009 - Industry News File
How the newspaper industry threw away its lead in online search engines

By Robert Niles

Recently, newspapers executives have been approaching search engine companies, notably market leader Google, asking the search engines to change their ranking algorithms to move up results from newspaper websites, arguing that they are more authoritative than other sites, given newspapers' experience and large reporting staffs, and that they are often the original sources of much information republished online. (They've also argued that they should be paid for stories that are linked to from the Google News page, but that's a different issue for a different post.)

"You should not have a system," AdAge quoted one content executive in March, "where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately."

We've dispatched the "parasite" meme before; no need to take that up again. But search engine algorithm should be rewarding original sources of information, and given the head start the newspaper industry had as the premier sources for news in their communities, one would think that newspapers would enjoy strong online authority, in search engine terms, as well.

Well, they would have... if they hadn't given it away.

Let's review how sites move up in search engine results. Back in the early days of the Internet, before Google, your position in search results for a particular term depended solely on how often that term showed up on your webpage. That led to an immense amount of lousy design, as webmasters devised an immense number of ways to cram keyword phrases onto their pages.

Google put a stop to that by introducing a different ranking algorithm, one based on inbound links. Simply, the more inbound links that a page had using specific keywords as anchor text, the higher that page ranked in Google search results for those keywords. And the more links a page had from highly-rated pages, the higher that page was ranked.

This should have been the jackpot for newspaper websites. With limited competition in the late 1990s, newspapers enjoyed millions of inbound links from independent webpages, discussion forums and early blog-like journals. With the number of those links accumulating over time, newspaper websites should have built an insurmountable lead over start-up competitors in the search engine results.

And they would have, had they not broken almost all of those inbound links.

Here's one more example of a newspaper business policy coming back to kill the industry. Most newspapers websites then broke their website story links after a week or two, moving stories from their free website into paid archives, at a different URL. Many papers continue that practice today.

When a story moves from a free URL to a different, paid one, the inbound links to that story break, and the newspaper loses the search engine advantage provided by those links. Worse, it's widely accepted that a high number of broken link errors actually penalizes a domain in search engine results, depressing the rankings of webpages that remain freely available on the site.

I've written before about how the news industry's print-driven conventions for writing and updating ongoing stories hurts their position in the search engines. But breaking links after a week or two just kills newspaper websites.

Still worse, the newspaper industry blew its chance to help itself by too rarely linking to other newspaper websites. Remember, links from highly-ranked sites count more than links from lowly-ranked ones. With so many in-bound links, newspaper websites had the opportunity to vault to the top of search engine results.

Had the industry made a practice of linking to other paper's scoops, newspapers could have indurated their advantage. Instead, papers continued their established conventions of either duplicating each others' reporting, or republishing wire versions of the same story.

Neither delivered any search engine advantage to the original report's paper. In fact, when more-popular newspapers ran wire versions of stories from smaller newsrooms, the larger paper often got the higher position in the search engine results for that story.

Imagine if newspapers had taken a different tack in 1995. Imagine if they had kept their stories online, permanently at the same URL, using 301 redirects when necessary due to content management system changes. Imagine if, instead of duping original reporting from other papers and high-authority websites, they had linked to those webpages. And imagine if they had built staff-lead, reader-driven, two-way interactive communities before simple blogging and discussion forum tools allowed competitors to do the same.

Actually, it's not hard to imagine what would have happened. Newspapers would have recreated their print market domination online, and the industry would not have to have face the crisis it does today.

One might be tempted to write off this post as after-the-fact criticism. But that would deny the voices within the newspaper-dot-com industry who argued the same points I've made today back in 1995, and for more than a decade after that.

The newspaper industry was warned. And greedy managers ignored those warning, deciding instead that they could apply monopolistic operational principles in a new, highly competitive environment.

Those managers were wrong. And that is why the newspaper industry is in grave danger today. Not because of the search engines. Or the blogs. Or the economy. The newspaper industry had the opportunity to dominate online.

And it blew it.

Secret to Publication Growth

Earning Money Online

So, you want to earn money online? You are really fired up, perhaps a little desperate, and you have your credit card at the ready. Before you key your card numbers into any "online opportunity" read this article VERY carefully. There are some truths you desperately need to hear!

Did you know that 95% of all the people trying to make money online are FAILING to make a profit at all? Ouch! That might have dented your enthusiasm a bit.

There are many reasons for this high failure rate - bad programs, useless e-books that teach you nothing, and slick sales pages written by equally slick salesmen who can't wait to separate you from hard earned money! And there are equally culpable people who buy into this rubbish and, however unwillingly, contribute to the high failure rate.

We all need to take responsibility for the state of affairs that now exists on the Internet and lean to spot the 'red-flags' that are being used to lure you away from your money! It is equally important that we know the reality of Internet marketing - which is very different from what is being promoted in most online programs!

So, let's start with some common myths or what could more accurately be described as sophisticated marketing ploys. If you've surfed for any online business opportunities you will almost certainly have come across many of these - you might even have been sucked in by one or two of them!

1) Self-proclaimed "Gurus"

This is when an e-book author, or program owner, give themselves a catchy nick-name which creates the impression they are really successful. I won't mention names but just look for the titles that people give themselves - you will soon get what I mean.

Now, there is nothing wrong with promoting your own personal brand - that is what the whole science of "attraction marketing" is based around - but when you have no idea what their product is until after you have paid for it then it is simply a marketing ploy. They want you to remember their name - if you hear, or see it enough times, you may just buy into it.

2) Quick riches

With very few exceptions, most people will fall for the ploy of quick riches! We would all love to be wealthy quickly and easily without having to do very much for it! So, the strategy of "Quick Riches" appeals to our sense of greed and wishful thinking! This tactic is used at most money-making websites these days. You see it all the time "From Bankruptcy to $134,000 in 45 days". Of course, it is almost always a lie! But a very powerful one nevertheless, and one that people buy into every single minute of the day!

3) The "Do-Nothing" programs

This is closely aligned with the instant riches program, except this one appeals to our innate laziness! We would all love to have money pouring into our accounts with very little effort on our behalf - what a great system that would be! You will see online opportunities that claim: "You don't have to refer others", or,"You don't have to promote", or,"You don't have to do any work at all"!

That would be a really great program wouldn't it? It pays you lots of money and you don't have to do a thing for it! If it was true, and such a program existed, it would be the only one on the Internet - we simply wouldn't need anything else!

Of course, the reality is that some marketer is playing a numbers game. He or she knows that there are enough desperate or gullible people out there who will buy into this nonsense and hand over their money, so why not?

Let's use a little bit of common sense for just a second. Life just isn't like that - find me one conventional offline business where you can do absolutely nothing and still make money? There isn't one!

Impact of the Internet

As our digital and physical lives blur further, the internet has become the information hub where people spend a majority of their time learning, playing and communicating with others globally.

Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of just how staggering the numbers are of people collaborating, researching, and interacting on the web. by Adam Singer

Google search stats:
1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) approximate number of unique URLs in Google’s index
2,000,000,000 (two billion) very rough number of Google searches daily
$110,000,000 approximately amount of money lost by Google annually due to the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button
24,400 number of people employed by Google (December, 2008)
68,000,000 the average number of times people Googled the word Google each month for the last year
$39.96 the average cost per click for the phrase “consolidation of school loans” in AdWords
1,430,000 the number of Google results for “Robert Scoble”
136,000 the number of Google results for “Admiral Ackbar”

Wikipedia stats
2,695,205 the number of articles in English on Wikipedia
684,000,000 the number of visitors to Wikipedia in the last year
75,000 the number of active contributors to Wikipedia
10,000,000 the number of total articles in Wikipedia in all languages
260 the number of languages articles have been written in on Wikipedia

YouTube stats
70,000,000 number of total videos on YouTube (March 2008)
200,000 number of video publishers on YouTube (March 2008)
100,000,000 number of YouTube videos viewed per day
112,486,327 number of views the most viewed video on YouTube has (January, 2009)
2 minutes 46.17 seconds average length of video
412.3 years length in time it would take to view all content on YouTube (March 2008)
26.57 average age of uploader
13 hours amount of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
US $1.65 billion in Google stock amount Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for in October 2006
$1,000,000 YouTube’s estimated bandwidth costs per day

Blogosphere stats
133,000,000 number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
346,000,000 number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)
900,000 average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period
1,750,000 number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)
77% percentage of active Internet users who read blogs
55% percentage of the blogosphere that drinks more than 2 cups of coffee per day (source)
81 number of languages represented in the blogosphere
59% percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years

Twitter stats
1,111,991,000 number of Tweets to date
3,000,000 number of Tweets/day(March 2008) (from TechCrunch)
165,414 number of followers of the most popular Twitter user
86,078 number of followers of the most active Twitter user
63% percentage of Twitter users that are male (from Time)

Facebook stats
200,000,000 number of active users
100,000,000 number of users who log on to Facebook at least once each day
170 number of countries/territories that use Facebook
35 number of different languages used on Facebook
2,600,000,000 number of minutes global users in aggregate spend on Facebook daily
100 number of friends the average user has
700,000,000 number of photos added to Facebook monthly
52,000 number of applications currently available on Facebook
140 number of new applications added per day

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