News seekers are far more likely to go to an aggregator site such as Google News than they are to a traditional news site, according to a study done by Outsell, Inc. The study finds that people seeking news turn to an aggregator 31 percent of the time, whereas they only go to a traditional newspaper site eight percent of the time. 18 percent of the time, they’ll go to an “other” site for news. Outsell analyst Ken Doctor’s conclusion is that sites such as Google News are taking away views from newspaper and TV sites:
“Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it’s also taking a significant share away. A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers’ individual sites.”
There is, of course, a counterargument: people are visiting news aggregators, and they wouldn’t have visited a traditional news site in the first place. Still, the survey says that the numbers of people visiting traditional sites is dropping. The study draws a correlation between the rise of aggregators and the fall of traditional site visits.
There’s little hope for a paid model too, according to the company’s press release:
“Newspapers that see paid online content as a panacea are in for a rude awakening. Only 10 percent of news users are willing to pay for a print newspaper subscription to gain online access. Seventy-five percent say they’d turn to a different source for local online news if their newspapers required a paid subscription.”
The company issued the release, in part, to promote sales of its survey, News Users 2009.
