Adam Sherk

JULY 9, 2013

But what about using search and social data to influence the editorial calendar over the longer term? But allowing search and social data to influence (not dictate) the editorial calendar and content planning process can reap significant benefits for traffic and audience development. Search Queries data in Google Webmaster Tools.

Research 183

Research Content Hitwise Adwords 183

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 23, 2013

The news of layoffs at StumbleUpon reminded me that in compiling some year-end social media referral data I’d noticed that a number of sites had experienced declines in StumbleUpon traffic. Participation, budgets and timing varies greatly for the sites in this group and I am not able to segment that in the reported data.

StumbleUpon 172

StumbleUpon Sites Content Survey 172

Adam Sherk

MAY 24, 2011

Alterian recently released some data on the most popular summer blockbusters in social media, focusing specifically on movies with May and June release dates. Does the Alterian data match what is available through some of the free tools out there?

Alterian 143

Alterian Social Media Film Sentiment 143

Adam Sherk

MARCH 24, 2011

But the data is certainly encouraging and it is good to see evidence that social media press releases are performing well. After an interview with Shel Holtz on the value of press releases RealWire CEO Adam Parker revisited some previous research to see how SMNRs are faring against traditional press releases.

Press Release 191

Press Release News Social Media Research 191

Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

by Adam Sherk on February 23, 2010 There is an interesting article in BusinessWeek on how AOL is utilizing software and analytics data in an effort to match content with user interests and monetize it more successfully. But there is no reason not to use tools and data to help make smart business – and editorial – decisions.

Hitwise 110

Hitwise Press Release Adsense Syndication 110

Adam Sherk

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

But if you have a SimilarWeb PRO subscription you can pull this data for any site. I started with the sites surveyed in my post on search and social traffic and then added several more newspaper, magazine and content sites, for a total of 70 brands. Here’s a breakdown by percentile.

Mobile 164

Mobile Publishing Hitwise Patterns 164

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 31, 2009

SearchMonkey allows sites to use structured data to include additional information in their Yahoo search results such as addresses and phone numbers, review scores, pricing, etc. For technical details and instructions see the SearchMonkey News help page.

Yahoo 101

Yahoo News Syndication Press Release 101

Adam Sherk

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

With Blekko officially launching this week the new search engine is getting a lot of attention particularly in the search marketing community because of SEO data it provides. But I was curious to compare the data provided for major news sites. Related posts: 20+ Major News Sites Ranked by Domain Authority.

Sites 112

Sites News Postrank SEO 112

Adam Sherk

MAY 13, 2009

Initially Google is supporting data on reviews and people. You can follow Google’s guidelines for marking up structured data to learn how to do it, including the specific properties for reviews.

Review 100

Review Google Embedding Press Release 100

Adam Sherk

JUNE 15, 2010

The easiest thing to compare is reach based on Twitter followers and I’ve included that data below. The data point they make available without a subscription is called “Impact.” Please accept the usual caveats about the accuracy of the data, methodology of the tool, etc. 2,461,060 2 @cnnbrk 77.3% 3,139,883 3 @TIME 76.9%

News 165

News Sites Twitter Digg 165

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 6, 2010

That’s not an easy question to answer without having access to each site’s analytics data and knowing their goals and objectives. But it is possible to make some basic comparisons using data from some of the free tools that are available. So which news sites are getting the most out of their social media efforts?

Sites 176

Sites News Postrank Engagement 176

Adam Sherk

MAY 4, 2010

Laura Hale May 4, 2010 at 10:01 pm Interesting data. But interesting read and I really appreciate how you laid out how you got this data and why you did the data collection method you chose. Great take on NBA/social media. Chicago Bulls were about where I’d expect them.

Team 165

Team Engagement Facebook Press Release 165

Adam Sherk

MAY 19, 2009

Shining a Spotlight on Video News Webmaster Tools: Updates to Search queries, Parameter handling and Messages Twitter data lets NPR glimpse a future of app-loving news junkies Shared Items Disclaimer The opinions expressed on this blog are Adam Sherks own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his company or its clients.

Hitwise 100

Hitwise News Report Press Release 100

Adam Sherk

MAY 19, 2009

Shining a Spotlight on Video News Webmaster Tools: Updates to Search queries, Parameter handling and Messages Twitter data lets NPR glimpse a future of app-loving news junkies Shared Items Disclaimer The opinions expressed on this blog are Adam Sherks own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his company or its clients.

Hitwise 100

Hitwise News Report Press Release 100

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 28, 2010

For publishers that focus on evergreen content such as lifestyle topics the available trend data is much more limited. Search trend and social media data is useful for optimizing specific pieces, developing new content ideas and ongoing editorial planning. And don’t forget to identify your own top trends by looking at your data.

Trends 114

Trends Embedding Content Patterns 114

Adam Sherk

DECEMBER 22, 2009

Data like this is interesting to check out, and it can provide useful insights for marketers and content producers in getting a better understanding of user interest and activities in both search and social media. Last week Twitter gave us their Top Twitter Trends of 2009 for categories like news events, people, movies, etc.

Trends 167

Trends How To Digg Press Release 167

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 28, 2012

Maybe I’ll do a quick study in a future post or perhaps someone like PageLever or EdgeRank Checker has good data on this. But popular sports teams tend to have such a large following that I suspect these posts would do very well regardless. Here are some more recent examples. What do you think – annoying or effective?

Sports 116

Sports Team Facebook News 116

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 14, 2015

Structured Data Markup. Structured data markup and the schema.org vocabulary continue to grow in importance for conveying relevancy and taking advantage of additional features in the search results. App store optimization (ASO) is another component that is important to dial in.

SEO 100

SEO Syndication Marketing NoFollow 100

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 20, 2009

search to get click data on each of those shortened URLs. reports from its search page are not very complete or accurate (you get better data on URLs you’ve personally shortened in your history when signed into bit.ly). Of those 51 releases, 28 included a bit.ly URL, so I tried using bit.ly URLs in Muck Rack releases.

Press Release 145

Press Release Twitter URL RSS 145

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.

Survey 140

Survey Social Networking Engineering Research 140

Adam Sherk

JULY 10, 2012

But in the first year of Google+ it has not been all that common to find audience data with women as the majority. Women are the strong majority in every age group: Now for a fashion magazine site with a largely female readership that is hardly surprising.

Google 119

Google Fashion Sites Report 119

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 6, 2010

I don’t have any data on what kind of traffic the Tumblr site is getting, but either it is fairly low or visitors simply aren’t starting discussions there. In looking through the site though one thing stands out – nearly every item has no comments or reactions: That seems odd, but it’s not just a holiday season slowdown.

Tumblr 131

Tumblr Engagement Press Release Syndication 131

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 25, 2009

Here are five ways to mitigate seasonal search traffic declines: Go after hot topics – Regularly monitor the top searches, topics and trend data published by search engines and social media sites for content ideas and opportunities. It’s not easy to chase search trends as there is a danger of always ending up one step behind.

Engineering 102

Engineering Hitwise Health Care Press Release 102

Adam Sherk

MAY 3, 2011

In the Eastern Conference Finals the Bulls and Heat tied with a Klout score of 81, so I used additional data from Klout to declare the winner. Boston and Miami was a great matchup; let’s hope the real series is that close.

Klout 148

Klout Twitter Conference Team 148

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 10, 2012

I’m going to forgo looking at which media outlets have attracted the largest following since that data becomes quickly outdated. News organizations (along with businesses of all kinds) have been able to create official Google+ pages for a couple months now so I thought I’d check in and see how their pages are doing.

Organization 218

Organization News Engagement Google 218

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 25, 2012

To anonymize the data I combined each site’s figures into a total number for the group. I’m not able to reveal the specific sites or figures due to confidentially requirements but they are all well established brands. The numbers represent visits, not pageviews.

Digg 149

Digg Reddit Survey Publishing 149

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 11, 2010

I’ll do a follow-up post when there is more data to report on. Once the new Digg moves out of alpha and has some time to gain traction we’ll get a better sense of how interested users are in drilling down on specific sources, topics and locations. Related posts: News Sites on the New Digg: Who is Active, Who is Gaining Followers?

Digg 166

Digg Marketing News Press Release 166

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 21, 2010

There is a lot more data in the Cision study , so I recommend downloading it to get the whole story. According to the survey: Less experienced journalists use information from press releases and PR professionals more now than five years ago to write their stories – more so than their more experienced counterparts.

Social Media 122

Social Media Press Release Microblogging Survey 122

Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 11, 2012

Also take advantage of the Webmaster Tools API to gain full access to all of the Google Webmaster Tools error data for your sites. Enterprise-level suites like BrightEdge , Conductor and seoClarity are a good place to start. For more suggestions check out Ian Lurie’s What Is In Your Enterprise SEO Toolkit? “Yada, yada, yada.”

SEO 173

SEO Wikipedia Project Creative Commons 173

Adam Sherk

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

Capturing data on only “official” accounts and pages was actually somewhat difficult (I welcome corrections if I’ve missed any). The New Orleans Saints and New York Giants are currently at the bottom of the social media heap with no official presence on either Twitter or Facebook.

Team 209

Team Twitter Facebook Sports 209

Adam Sherk

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

Shining a Spotlight on Video News Webmaster Tools: Updates to Search queries, Parameter handling and Messages Twitter data lets NPR glimpse a future of app-loving news junkies Shared Items Disclaimer The opinions expressed on this blog are Adam Sherks own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his company or its clients.

News 101

News Google Hitwise Press Release 101

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 24, 2010

Conclusions It is important to note that everyone’s Google results are a bit different based on what data center they are hitting, when they do the search, the degree of personalization, etc. In fact even running the same queries 30 minutes later gave me different results in some cases than what is pictured above.

News 113

News List Google Embedding 113

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 23, 2013

So I set out to gather some informal data. When I previously wrote about how to use the standout tag , I wished I could have provided some insights on how often “Featured” articles appear and which publications are most often cited.

News 159

News Study Google Journal 159

Adam Sherk

MARCH 7, 2011

There are certainly downsides like the lack of backup, ceding control and giving Facebook access to valuable data for free, weakening your own on-site community, etc. So for the average user these concerns are not always relevant. So is the system good for publishers? I think it is. Ryan Singel covered this well last week.

Comments 132

Comments Publishing Facebook System 132

Adam Sherk

APRIL 13, 2010

At a minimum you should monitor the Site Performance data in your Webmaster Tools account and make an effort to minimize your average load times. So you don’t need to drop everything and make site performance your #1 priority, but it is something to be mindful of. How can you improve site speed?

Sites 161

Sites News Yahoo SEO 161

Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This is data driven and not an “arbitrary decision.” For example the Charlotte Observer is likely to be given more weight on stories about North Carolina. Trusted Sources – Trusted sources are given a boost in each edition and section via various signals.

News 158

News Google Tips Press Release 158

Adam Sherk

APRIL 26, 2010

Not covered in my examples above is the fact that Open Graph protocol can also provide sites with additional reporting data. Site speed is now a ranking factor so this impacts SEO as well as usability.

News 149

News Module Widget Facebook 149