Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

The content on search engines and social media gets a little lost among all the stats and charts so I thought I’d summarize that data here. Search Engines 34% of the public now use search engines to find news at least three days a week, up from 19% in 2008. Only 3% regularly or sometimes gets news from Twitter.

Survey 140

Survey Social Networking Engineering Research 140

Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

It is not usual to see a syndicated, aggregated or simply re-covered version of an article gain prominent visibility over the original. Perhaps Tom’s Guide is making better use of Google News sitemaps which calls better attention to their content.

News 121

News Google Syndication Aggregator 121

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 11, 2010

But before we dismiss online and social media sources as nothing more than aggregators and promotion outlets, let’s remember that this study reflects the state of the news ecosystem today. Things are just now beginning to shift as the economic viability of the current model is beginning to fail.

Study 147

Study News Press Release Report 147

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 11, 2010

This is particularly appealing for publishers with content that may be of interest to specific audiences as opposed to the wider Digg user base. These are anchored by the main NBC Local profile that highlights the best local content with a better chance of having a wide appeal. It serves as an aggregator of our best local content.

Digg 166

Digg Marketing News Press Release 166

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 1, 2009

A tactic that some news and content sites employ is monitoring Google’s Hot Trends list in an effort to identify hot topics and then quickly produce matching content around them. I’ve primarily stuck to aggregated trend/topic lists to keep the list manageable. Does this work? So how do you monitor these trends?

Trends 146

Trends Tools Embedding Digg 146

Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

Articles need to be “objective news” to lead a story cluster (op-ed, satire, press releases and subscription content are not eligible to lead clusters). Duplication and Novelty Detection – More credit is given to original sources of content. Google News uses “Citation Rank” to try to determine the original source (i.e.

News 158

News Google Tips Press Release 158

Adam Sherk

JULY 9, 2009

In looking at syndicated content on Yahoo News, most of the syndicated articles do not include attribution links (each news source likely has to request or provide them), but among those that do exist there is a problem. Which News Sites Have the Most Valuable Facebook Pages?

Syndication 100

Syndication Yahoo SEO News 100

Adam Sherk

JUNE 30, 2009

However from an SEO perspective there is a downside, as syndication creates duplicate content issues. Search engines don’t want to show users multiple versions of the same content, so when an article has been syndicated it’s likely that one version will be given prominence – and that may or may not be the original.

Syndication 111

Syndication Press Release SEO Publishing 111

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 31, 2010

Help Haiti: News Sites Promote Ways to Donate Videos in Press Releases are Cool – If They Provide Meaningful Content { 4 comments… read them below or add one } The PR Coach August 31, 2010 at 7:08 pm Excellent report and analysis Adam. Hard to believe mainstream TV isn’t all over this.

Sites 182

Sites News YouTube Press Release 182

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 20, 2010

Coming up with a viable metered model that still allows a wide audience to discover and interact with the content – in the ways that they prefer – is just one step on a challenging road ahead. The reality is that the industry is being radically re-invented by new technology, and there are no easy answers out there.

Press Release 126

Press Release Digg News SEO 126

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 21, 2012

Beyond personalized search results the engines are also looking at social activity in aggregate to help evaluate the popularity or relative importance of content and the authority of both sites and authors. Unfortunately many social media sites add a “nofollow” attribute to any links within user generated content.

SEO 278

SEO Social Media NoFollow Engineering 278

Adam Sherk

MARCH 30, 2011

Many publishers are now doing a good job of developing social media strategies for brand awareness, content promotion and user engagement. It’s an interesting topic and one that is more challenging for news and content sites than some other types of businesses. But is it possible to extract user intent in a meaningful way?

Publishing 131

Publishing Social Media Aggregator ROI 131

Adam Sherk

APRIL 3, 2012

But fear not, I come with real data to share albeit it in aggregated and anonymized format. So even for lifestyle sites with content that is a natural fit for Pinterest the actual number of visits is still modest. Yes, this is indeed another post about Pinterest. In Q4 2011 Pinterest was a top 10 referring domain for 4 out of 25 sites.

Sites 157

Sites Digg Reddit Fashion 157