comScore today released a report of the top U.S. online newspaper groups based on the comScore Media Metrix service. The newspaper category represents the first site category for which each of the top ten ranked entities has transitioned to the comScore Media Metrix 360 (Unified Digital Measurement) methodology.
The report showed that more than 123 million Americans visited newspaper sites in May, representing 57 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience. It also showed The New York Times brand led the category with more than 32 million visitors and 719 million pages viewed during the month.
The average visitor viewed 22 pages of content on The New York Times, also leading the top ten. Tribune Newspapers ranked second in terms of audience with 24.8 million visitors, followed by Advance Internet (18.1 million visitors) and USA Today Sites (16.8 million visitors).
It’s worth noting that both The New York Times, Tribune Newspapers and Advance Internet are all optimizing their stories for news search engines.
I interviewed Matthew Brown of The New York Times about the news search optimization panel at SES New York, 2010. Brown said news search is a lot different than a mere Google Web search.
Optimizing news search with New York Times SEO, Matthew Brown at SES New York 2010
And Jonathan Allen, the director of Search Engine Watch, interviewed John Shehata, Director of SEO & Social Media at Advance Internet, Inc.