How to win web readers and influence people

Australia is gearing up for a general election and already Google is stepping up to take control. The search engine has got all your information needs covered: YouTube channels for the major political parties, news alert software so that you can follow events in the House of Representatives, and a search facility so that you can read what your representative said.

Curiously, there is, at least at the moment, no such site for the possibly impending British election, but with Google’s brand skills and knowledge, it could also become the destination for UK election news.

The good news for newspaper owners is that Google doesn’t sell advertising on the back of the news search – at least not yet. But the uncomfortable truth for newspapers is not only that Google News and its search engine channel an estimated 30 per cent of traffic to newspaper websites, but that Google News is capturing British audiences.

The US news blogger Matt Drudge is similar in that it gives stories an influence that a newspaper home page struggles to. A popular news item online might be read 20,000 times, but if it is linked to Drudge, the number of readers can reach half a million.

Drudge’s growing interest in the Daily Mail is considered to have made a significant contribution to the tabloid’s web audience. However his interests are global and he brings a US audience – making his influence difficult to use as a selling point to London newspaper advertisers. And he is an advertising competitor too.

There are smaller websites that influence the news – social news sites such as digg.com – as well as the many technology blogs. It is easy to conclude that such sites are exerting an unfair influence over what is popular online, and that you would have to strip them away to get a sense of the real audience. But that is too simplistic.

Although the search engines and websites may magnify an issue, they also reflect the tastes of the audience. Take yesterday lunchtime’s most read story on the BBC website: “Russian Woman Has Giant Baby”.

Websites that focus on political stories do not do as well as those with a mix of international news, sports, entertainment and quirky stories. It appears that interest from print audiences in campaigns such as those run by The Sun and The Daily Telegraph, for example, on the need for a referendum on the European constitution, is not matched by interest from online audiences.

The Sun’s European petition was signed by 15,678 people online, while 26,471 phoned its “Yes” hotline. Similarly, of the 100,328 readers in total who signed The Telegraph’s petition, 33,001 did so online, where surely it is easier to sign up.

However such instant feedback, whether on the number of page views of a story or the number of people signing an online petition, is going to shape how news is presented.

Putting readers at the heart of the editorial equation has been long overdue, but it is only the relatively recent attempts by mainstream news publications to integrate the internet that have enabled this to become a reality.

This phenomenon changes more than just presentation. Get the right issue or list up – for example, the 12 most high-profile businessmen behind bars – and you can attract a lot of hits. And that changes news agendas.

One might ask who has the upper hand in controlling taste and value – is it Drudge or the Daily Mail? This, too, is too simplistic, but there is clearly room for people to make money from directing people to other people’s news, as well as simply publishing the news – although it has not yet taken off in Britain.

For those who do not have access to market research and focus groups it is presenting far easier ways to determine what is popular and what is not.

Dan Sabbagh: Media analysis
The Times