• About
    • History of Dallas SEO
    • SEO Expert Witness Service
  • Contact
  • Topics
    • Bing
    • Blogging
    • Branding
    • Domain Names
    • Google
    • Internet Marketing
    • Link Building
    • Local Search
    • Marketing
    • Public Relations
    • Reputation Management
    • Search Engine Marketing
    • Search Engine Optimization
    • Search Engines
    • Social Media
    • Tech
  • Advertise
  • Email Newsletter

Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Search, Marketing, Tech, and Domains.

traffic analysis tools

Home » Google » Google News Audit Shows Google Favors 3 Left-Leaning News Sources

Google News Audit Shows Google Favors 3 Left-Leaning News Sources

Posted By Bill Hartzer on May 13, 2019at 12:24 pm

Google News Audit

A recent Google News audit shows that the top 3 news outlets, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, is favored by Google in their results a lot of the time. According to the audit, the top 20 percent (136 of 678 news sites) accounted for 86 percent of article impressions overall. Furthermore, “62.4 percent of article impressions were from sources rated by that research as left-leaning, whereas 11.3 percent were from sources rated as right-leaning. 26.3 percent of impressions were from news sources that didn’t have ratings”, according to CJR.

Nicholas Diakopoulos of the Columbia Journalism Review set up a scraper to evaluate and audit the Top Stories in Google News. They scraped Google’s news results based on 200 search queries related to news events that occurred in November 2017. They also set up the scaper to minimize the personalization of search results. They then ran each search query once per minute for a 24 hour period.

The search queries that they used were determined by looking at Google Trends every day and manually choosing keywords related to hard news events. For example, they used people mentioned in the news, breaking news events, and issue-specific keywords. Some of them included Colin Kaepernick, earthquake, tax reform, or even healthcare gov.

In total, they collected 6,302 unique links to news articles shown in Google’s Top Stories box. Then, “for each of those links count an article impression each time one of those links” appeared.

According to CJR, “The data shows that just 20 news sources account for more than half of article impressions. The top 20 percent of sources (136 of 678) accounted for 86 percent of article impressions. And the top three accounted for 23 percent: CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. These statistics underscore the degree of concentration of attention to a relatively narrow slice of news sources.” They went on to say that “on average there were 19 sources per query, but 30 percent of queries had 10 or fewer sources…”

More News is Produced by the Left

Here’s what I found interesting according to the audit: more news is produced by the Left than the Right.

“Is there simply more news produced on the left? It appears so. We confirmed this by searching the GDELT database of news articles for the same queries we used to audit Google. In GDELT there were 2.2 times as many articles from left-leaning sources as right-leaning sources. But in Google Top Stories that ratio was 3.2, indicating that the curation algorithm was slightly magnifying the left-leaning skew in comparison to the GDELT baseline.”

Personally, I’m not surprised that the top 3 news organizations essentially pump out more news than other right-leaning organization out there. As you may recall, I was interviewed by CBS News a while back about Google’s News algorithm and why it appeared that more left-leaning articles were being produced, especially when it came to news about Donald Trump. Well, now we have more answers.

Image/graphic courtesy CJR.

Filed Under: Google

traffic analysis tools

Listen to "Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer" on Spreaker.

About Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer is CEO of Hartzer Consulting, LLC, an SEO Consulting firm that includes services such as search engine optimization, technical SEO audits, domain name consulting, and online reputation management.

Recent Posts

  • Andrew Muller on Testing Google Ads Using Facebook Ads January 15, 2021
  • Mike Rhodes from Web Savvy On Google Ads January 8, 2021
  • How to Opt Out of Google Analytics December 16, 2020
  • Majestic Just Changed SEO and Linking Forever December 15, 2020
  • Yext Consumer Search Trend Predictions for 2020 December 8, 2020
  • SearchBox Launches SearchAI SmartSuggest, SearchAI Answers and SearchAI Personalization December 7, 2020
  • Google Poly is Shutting Down December 2, 2020
  • Domain Name Brokers Put FFF.com and HHH.com Domains Up for Sale December 1, 2020
  • Google Webmaster Tools Moves Twitter Account November 11, 2020
  • Email Deliverability, Setting Up DMARC, DKIM, and SPF on Your Domain October 29, 2020
  • The Bing Search Engine is Now Microsoft Bing October 6, 2020
  • Beck Power on Building Authority on Social Media and Repurposing Content October 2, 2020
  • Naira Perez on Paid Media, and an Intro to Social Paid Media, and Audiences September 17, 2020
  • Fake Birth Date Used on Google and Apple Accounts Is on Credit Report August 17, 2020
  • What is Bill Hartzer Disease? July 20, 2020
  • Web Host Agents Sending Fake Invoices for Website Hosting July 17, 2020
  • Duane Forrester On Search Intent and Internal Site Search July 9, 2020
  • Google Loses Blogspot.In Domain Name July 8, 2020
  • Peter Leshaw on In-House Digital Marketing and Dashboards for Reporting July 2, 2020
  • Mark Traphagen on Schema, Schema Tools, and On Page SEO Tools June 29, 2020

DFWSEM logo

Bill Hartzer is a Brand Ambassador for:



Industry Friends

WTFSEO
SEO By the Sea
Jeff Lenney
Jeff Gabriel
Phil Drinkwater
Dixon Jones

Connect With Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Twitter
Bill Hartzer on Instagram
Hartzer Consulting on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on YouTube

Categories

  • Advertising (19)
  • Bing Search Engine (6)
  • Blogging (42)
  • Branding (12)
  • Domain Names (197)
  • Google (228)
  • Internet Marketing (24)
  • Internet Usage (84)
  • Link Building (52)
  • Local Search (38)
  • Marketing (176)
  • Marketing Foo (30)
  • Pay Per Click (1)
  • Podcast (8)
  • Public Relations (8)
  • Reputation Management (9)
  • Search Engine Marketing (44)
  • Search Engine Marketing Events (47)
  • Search Engine Marketing Firms (19)
  • Search Engine Marketing Jobs (33)
  • Search Engine Optimization (156)
  • Search Engines (202)
  • Social Media (187)
  • Tech (7)
  • Web Analytics (16)




Note: All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only, and are mentioned only to help my readers. All other trademarks cited herein are the property of their respective owners. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement.




Hartzer Consulting



Website, Content, and Marketing by Hartzer Consulting, LLC.

Copyright © 2021 by Bill Hartzer and Hartzer Consulting, LLC.

Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
Go to mobile version