44% of Google News Visitors Don’t Click Through

By Jordan McCollum on January 19, 2010

44% of Google News Visitors Don’t Click Through

The third annual News Users report from research firm Outsell has some interesting findings. While more and more people are going online for their news, and fewer people are getting their information from newspapers, it seems that many online news consumers are more like . . . well, “grazers.” And this might actually be good news for Germany’s Federation of Newspaper Publishers.

TechCrunch reports that 44% of US visitors to Google News do not click on any headlines, preferring instead to skim article snippets. Unsurprisingly, the Internet is becoming an ever more popular source for news, especially what Outsell calls “news right now,” with 56% of consumers turning to online news sources (up from 33% a few years ago).

Google News and other aggregators are a more likely destination than a single paper’s website, as well, with 31% going for the aggregator and only 8% picking a news site. (18% chose other. I guess, with rounding errors, that adds up to the 56ish% turning to online news sources?)

Of course, the numbers on the Internet eroding newspapers’ subscriber base aren’t surprising. Two months ago, we saw that American consumers were will to pay as much as $3 a month for their news (which I thought was kind of crappy, though many disagreed). Turns out it’s even crappier than I thought—according to Outsell, 75% would turn to a different source if their local newspaper sites put up a pay wall, and only 10% are willing to pay for a newspaper subscription to get online access. (Cough, NY Times, cough.)

The more interesting concept here, however, is that Outsell sees Google News becoming a destination for news instead of a starting point, like Google Search is. That might actually bode well for at least one competitor—Germany’s Federation of Newspaper Publishers. As we saw yesterday, the publishers are suing Google News as a monopoly for displaying snippets from their stories. (Robots.txt. Srsly.) If it turns out that many consumers are only reading the snippets and German newspapers aren’t seeing the downstream traffic, their case may have a little more merit.

And then they could just block Google News.

What do you think? Is Google News (along with other aggregators) becoming a destination for online news? Will this US data help out the German newspaper publishers’ case?

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15 comments on “44% of Google News Visitors Don’t Click Through”

Josh Braaten Says:

January 19th, 2010 at 1:50 pm

I think you hit on a very keen point: It’s not infringement nor a monopoly if Google just shows a snippet, as long as the snippet doesn’t replace the content itself. That was a big complaint for Bing with their video snippets when it just came out.

Ultimately, your point about robots.txt is the real story. All these people that are “afraid” of Google should do some basic homework and empower themselves to address their own concerns, if not use what’s out there to their own advantage. Winning a lawsuit against Google will not bring the newspaper back… it probably won’t even do anything positive for the pay-for-content model.
.-= Josh Braaten´s last blog ..Testing Usability: Question Before You Code =-.

Jordan McCollum Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Thanks, Josh. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with the robots.txt thing, since we’ve been saying it so much for American news sources, and saying it since the Copiepresse case 3 years ago.
Michael Martinez Says:

January 19th, 2010 at 2:44 pm

There is way too much news to read. I often just glance at the headlines and move on. I won’t pay for access to news stories. Too few of them are relevant enough to me to make it worth my while.
.-= Michael Martinez´s last blog ..Farewell, cruel social media life =-.
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Clean Cut Media Says:

January 21st, 2010 at 7:23 pm

we are all wondering how things will pan out for the new york times since they are going paid.
I am sure many are watching to see what happens.
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Don Says:

January 28th, 2010 at 3:10 pm

So much news, so many sources, grazing is what I do. But it will still evolve more. Will be real interesting to see what develops.
.-= Don´s last blog ..Our About Us Page – Enjoy Retirement Jobs =-.

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