Newsknife the leading online news ranking company has just released it's results for Top News Site 2006. Newsknife reports reviewing over 4500 news sites worldwide over the last 11 months that have indexed into Google News.
Coming in at the top of the list for the last couple of years is ABC News in first position. We can't share the list in it's entirety (visit Newsknife.com for full list), but we can give you a sneak peak:
This includes a sampling of 438,330 listings by 4504 sites for 1768 news items during 2006.
From our information Google News is consistantly ranking eash story according to the amount of request for that particular news or search queries it receives. So, at any given time a local news story can be featured on the front page of Google News.
Black Hills Today a local news provider to Google News is ranking in the Top 2% of the Top News Sites in 2006 at #170. Scott Prentice, CEO and President of Black Hills Today, explains that after a name change mid year in 2006 to Black Hills Today, that it may have even held them back from a higher ranking. "But, it's still truly exciting." Scott added.
Black Hills Today is currently going into it's third year online, offering News, Free Classifieds, Announcements, Business Directory, Newsletters, Coupons, and a Portal for the Online Community of the Black Hills.
Newsknife's Top News Sites for 2006 breaks down like this:
The list includes 433 of the Top News Sites out of 4504 sites.
(4072 Sites Didn't Make the List of Top News Sites 2006)
In addition, The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) recently released information pointing to the enormous growth - and potential - of these online properties. An article on these figures by Erik Sass of MediaPost Communications ("Black, White And Web All Over: Print Circ Dives, But Online Papers Prosper", 2/11/06) points to a current average quarterly growth rate for online newspapers of 23.9%, double that of the same period last year. The growth and the opportunity they present are significant, Sass argues, given that the industry was also reporting drops in circulatin of the printed products. "While online readers aren't monetised at nearly the same rate print readers are, the clear popularity of newspaper Web sites holds out promise for the industry during a time of transition," he concludes. via~Press Release: Nielsen NetRatings
