Google News in Spain: the first effects of the stop – Webnews

Marco Viviani , December 17, 2014, 11:41

Two days after the closing of Google News in Spain will record the first visible effects on traffic to news sites. External traffic is falling, while the total has decreased by a few percentage points. It is not a contradiction, but it shows that it is still early to say who will win this battle. But if it was a bet, the collapse would have a low altitude.

A US site safe credibility as GigaOM found in Josh Schwartz, the researcher in charge of Chartbeat, a first interesting source on the 50 most relevant sites of the Iberian Peninsula. Analyst firm declined rather gaudy outside traffic – that is, what-directed to the sites – on average is 15%. Obvious and natural to be so: yesterday who visit news.google.es is no longer the aggregation of links to articles of the sites, but a message that explains Google’s decision.

The data to interpret

As often happens in this area, traffic data are to be interpreted in a relative way, although it is quite complicated since before yesterday had never happened shutdown total service in a country and the only possible comparison is with the block volunteer group Springer in Germany, but that lasted only two weeks. Reasonably, Spain is going to the total traffic of Spanish publishers did not collapse, but the amount of relative and absolute external traffic decreased drastically , while domestic traffic is relatively safe and perhaps is increasing. Readers are moving between different information sites Spaniards more than before, just as they were moved by the closure of the aggregator.

The graph on the left, the traffic to Spanish sites (excluding social and search) during the day yesterday. To the right, the traffic outside. In both cases we see a decline over the same day last week. The overall traffic was affected by a 15% decline. A statistic still far from true collapse happened in Germany in a similar case. According to experts, however, is a matter of time.

Too soon

It is still too early to make numerical statements. The closure of Google News in Spain seems to have an impact on traffic to news sites Spaniards – impossible had not – but you will have to wait a few days to see how far you get the drop in traffic. Publishers who thought they celebrate for the first data would make a big mistake, as the detractors of copyright law can be observed objectively this drop to calculate the economic weight of the aggregator.

If the point Technically it is still too early, from the editorial point of view we are witnessing a clash ever seen, completely new . Some American newspapers, as the WSJ or NYT, have even tried to apply theory to Spanish law, and found that in fact the US would not be constitutionally possible (for a combination of fair use and the First Amendment), and they wonder why European publishers do not try to build value trying to ottimizzarsi on the Net instead of closing a clam. In the case of external traffic down, no one forbids them to create an alternative to GNews. The fact that claim to hold it open says a lot about their degree of innovation.