Local search: Seeing the UK's regional press through the eyes of Google

I've been writing a series of posts looking at site search across some of the UK's leading regional papers. Yesterday I published a table of their features.

In this last part of the series, I want to take a slightly different approach. I'm looking not at how people can search for content on the sites themselves, but how the sites appear when people search for them in Google.

Google 'Search-in-search'

Norfolk's Eastern Daily Press site was the only site out of the twenty I searched for to have a 'Search within search' box provided for them in the Google results.

From a distance it is unclear whether all the other sites have asked Google to 'opt out' of having a search box provided for them, or whether Google has not deemed them worthy of the, for some, dubious accolade. It makes sense for EDP24 to allow Google to persist with this interface however, since their own site search urges users to try their search terms on Google News search.

Google site links

The Dundee Courier is notable as it is one of the few sites amongst the 20 that Google does not give 'site links' to - the selection of up to 8 supplementary links that appear underneath popular search results.

The Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Evening Chronicle and Teesside Evening Gazette are also missing the extra links.

The Aberdeen Press & Journal is also unusual. Google only lists seven site links for this paper, instead of the maximum of eight.

Google maps

Some of the newspapers have maps to their headquarters inserted by Google into the top of the results. These include the Aberdeen Press & Journal and Evening Express, Belfast Telegraph, Leicester Mercury and Nottingham Evening Post.

Curiously, the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Evening Chronicle has a map and a link to their "Sunshine Fund" ranked higher by Google than their homepage.

Summary

The table below shows some of the data I gathered about how these 20 regional newspapers are listed in Google. The icons and numbers indicate whether the newspaper's listing featured a 'search-in-search' box, the number of site links appearing, whether a 'More results from $title >>' link appeared, or whether a map appeared. The text in the table represents the title and snippet of the website as presented by Google.

This research was carried out on the morning of Monday 5th January. Please note that I was searching for the name of the printed newspaper associated with a site, not the online brand, and that due to the increasing personalisation of the Google SERPS, other results may be available.

And finally...

That concludes my look at regional newspaper site search. Over the rest of this month I hope to publish a series on my own ultra-local media environment, and a series taking a wider look at contextual help around social bookmarking.