smh.com.au takes top place in rankings as Daily Mail and Guardian continue to surge

Is this the start of audience leaking from news.com to the Mail Online – hardly surprising since they both pursue the same brand of schlock journalism. News corp is obviously worried – hence their frenzied campaign against the Mail for plagiarism (even though News are clearly guilty of the same practice).

I wonder if smh numbers are helped by people clearing their cookies to get around their paywall. Regardless , I agree with Charlie that the arrival of the Mail Online will (possibly already is) hurt news.com more than any other site. News.com have taken a leaf right out of the MO playbook (ie very little real news, an obsession with celebrity gossip and clickbait yarns) so it now comes down to who does that best.

On you smh. Goes to show Fairfax are on the right path. The editorial team there remain committed to quality and the audience follows.

While one monthly result does not a trend make, that is a sizable gap that smh has opened up on news.com.au — and all the more significant, given smh is a paywalled site (ie restricted access) while news.com.au is not.

so who gets to call Rupert?

I think that the SMH will stay well ahead of The Guardian while The Guardian continues to send users to SMH through “More from around the web” links at the bottom of all articles.

I don’t see the sense in this. Could someone explain?

Great win by SMH by a state publication vs a national.

My insulin levels are falling back to normal now News’ over sweet journalistic junkies are finally being bailed up by the low GI and sustainably responsible journalism of Fairfax!!

wow, would hate to be the editor on news.com.au now?

Bet you Bruce Guthrie is a-smiling today

Great numbers for Taste.com – but concerning that people are spending more time on Dominos than any of the other food sites! Stay Classy Australia!

Can someone plz point to a good explanation of how ‘Nielsen Online Ratings’ works?

thanks!

fuck tony abet

Linking out to SMH and other publications from related articles, as with referring to sources via hyperlink, is part of the practice of Open Journalism, http://www.theguardian.com/media/open-journalism . All major news sites in Australia have recently blocked this kind of linking to theguardian.com but we are committed to our readers rather than our shareholders ( a benefit of not having any) ; so we will continue to link out where it is relevant and useful to our readers.

Um, I’m pretty sure the links from The Guardian to others through “More from around the web” are CPC ads and not an altruistic approach – revenue rather than anything else?

Eg Forget red lips and thick brows, here are the new beauty rules of 2014
(Yahoo!7 Lifestyle)

Surely not Open Journalism?

@ Anonymous: You’re right — these are indeed links to other sites for which the Guardian gets paid per click. They’re supplied by a third party called Outbrain. You’ll see same thing on Fairfax and News sites, also supplied by Outbrain. Most publishers don’t allow links to what could be termed competitor sites, but the Guardian doesn’t seem to have such qualms. Many of the links in its “More from around the web” section are to Fairfax sites….

Hi Hi.

In a nutshell the Nielsen Online Ratings uses a panel of around 8,000 people to ‘convert’ the traffic data (collected via tags) into audience ratings. That is, it derives duplication rates, age/gender profiles etc. A panel will always under-report audiences because of issues with sampling organisations like banks, government, defence, as well as public place access such as schools, universities, coffee shops, airport lounges etc. Conversely, a tag based system will always over-report audiences because of cookie deletion, location duplication (home and work access) and device duplication (PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet).

Lots of people fall for the trap of comparing their internal website metrics – which is traffic and not audience – with the Online Ratings which is measuring audience.

Does that help?