by Stephen Lawrence*

Flickr Image: ClickyKBD

To follow up on my previous post regarding Google’s (non)-coverage of Associated Press content, I opted to take a more controlled approach for this submission.

In other words, I let other people do the leg work for me.

A Google Alert was set up with the specific instructions: “author: Samantha Critchell.”  This would, of course, only return articles attributed to that name.  Why Samantha Critchell?  She’s a leading AP writer covering topics relevant to the cosmetics and fashion industry.  And, as we know, with the AP’s arching distribution of content, brand placement in her work would reach a very wide and diverse potential consumer readership.

Internally, we set up an order to monitor U.S. papers for Associated Press articles penned by Samantha Critchell, which I would monitor.

During a two week period (Jan. 19 – Feb. 2), Google alerted my email inbox 16 times with a total of 20 article links.  In this window, Ms. Critchell penned nine major articles ranging from a Golden Globes fashion round-up and a primer on facial mask products, to a feature on Vera Wang’s figure skating designs for previous Winter Olympic events.

The Alerts broke down as follows:

• Four of the articles were from ABC News.com, which fell outside of my print coverage experiment
• Three more were from the Canadian press, which also fell outside of parameters of the U.S. press.
• Of the remaining 13 domestic newspapers, our readers located the same articles from 11 of their print editions.
• Regarding that missing duo, one was from a paper which we have simply not yet received as of this time.  While the other, seems to not have published the article in its print edition.  Point goes to Google.

Last week, Yahoo and the Associated Press announced their own licensing agreement to allow the stream of AP content to Yahoo’s sites.  So, to add some additional gist to the topic, I ran a search through Yahoo News with the same subject and date parameters. 

The resulting hits were from eight newspapers and a single website.  Those are fewer results than the totals from Google.

• Surprisingly, none of the Yahoo! News results corresponded to those of Google News.
• Four of the eight newspapers articles were found in the print editions by BurrellesLuce readers.
• Three of the articles did not appear in the print editions of the publications and another article originates from an edition which we have not yet received. Points again to Yahoo.

On the other side of the coin, our BurrellesLuce readers located articles credited to Ms. Critchell in an additional 114 papers published during the same two week period. 

That’s a ten to one loss in coverage for Google. Perhaps this can chiefly be attributed to the search giant’s ongoing wrangling with the Associated Press over compensation, (never mind that it doesn’t cover paid or subscription based sources). Even with the agreement between Yahoo News and the AP, how can the discrepancy in sources and numbers be explained?  And in either case, how might such a potential loss affect your clients in the interim?

*Bio: A native of Mesa, Arizona, I graduated from the University of Arizona with a major in Near Eastern Studies. I began my career with BurrellesLuce in 1997 as a reader. As with most readers, I developed a special relationship with my assigned papers – those small town dailies and weeklies of the same flavor that my family had been employed in for two generations. Currently, I hold the position of quality assurance specialist, troubleshooting daily production issues. Outside interests include woodworking, and keeping my wife and dog happy. Twitter: BurrellesLuce; Facebook: BurrellesLuce