News page analytics

[Slenver]

News sites tend to employ a mix of automatic population of stories (based on publish time, for example) and manual, editorially controlled content. For something like the BBC News page, it's probably that the top section is entirely manual and the the 'more news'-type sections are automated. Modules like 'Sport' will take the top stories from the Sport page, where again, they're likely manually selected by a sports editor, for example, for that page. They're usually 'de-duped' so that any stories appearing in the top, manual section are removed from any automatically populated modules to avoid repetition.

It all depends on manpower though. For less important pages (and on smaller websites like local news), the amount of automation is higher. What often happens is that the page is populated entirely automatically, based on keywording, and then specific stories can be manually pinned to override this. Might just be the top story, or might be the top block of 3, or 5, or whatever.

In terms of the editorial process to decide how to order or keep stuff, that's just down to policy or editorial meetings, or individual editors. These days they spend a lot more time looking at analytics and will be smarter at basing decision on actual usage rather than just gut feel. A lot of content management systems will allow editors to see live figures overlaid on the page so that they can make layout choices using this data without having to leave the page and go and look stuff up elsewhere.

But ultimately yes, it's probably someone's decision to hold an important story near the top for whatever reason if that's what you're seeing.

[Count Steer]

I think the Guardian put stories up that fit with their agenda on certain topics and leave them there until they've garnered enough clicks to justify them saying that it's what people are interested in.

[Felix]

Would your cookies not have something to do with this. Read the story (Open page) and read it. Cookies remembers this so puts up another story. Fat bastard paying a lot of Tax due to all the food they eat does not interest you so you dont open the page. Cookies remember this and leave it up until you notice read this??

^^ That could be a load of shit but possible ^^

I remember looking at ferry prices a few years back for lets say October 1st. Every time i went back to look again the price went up. Presumably to get me to buy now. Looked at it on another computer and it was back down at the original price. Back to first computer and cleared the cookies and boom, Back down to original price.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I thought everyone knew about the 'clear your cookies to get cheaper flights' thing. That's definitely a thing.

Felix's point about adverts is also true (Mrs. D is an e-marketing specialist, half IT half marketing). Your profile follows you around the internet (based a lot on cookies) and adverts 'bid' to be on the pages you visit. I.e. all the banner ads are targeted at you and the advertiser would have undergone a (very rapid!) bidding war to be able to show you it when you first entered the site. Obviously they all have black/grey/white lists of which websites etc. they want to advertise on and stuff like that.

Sites like the Daily Mail do the same thing with the news they show you too.

It's really obvious when you see what people on places like this choose to comment on in 'Today's News Threads'. I never see any articles about Trans people being denied/allowed to do stuff for example, but loads of people post about it like it's the greatest epidemic ever to hit our society 'cause they see loads of it in the news. It's a self-reinforcing loop.

[Pirahna]

You don't even need to clear cookies for cheaper prices, use an incognito window, they're not just for porn.

[Mr. Dazzle]

You don't even need to clear cookies for cheaper prices, use an incognito window, they're not just for porn.

[irie]

How do things stay on (or drop off) the front page of news sites?

As I've said before I open the BBC news page as a starting point whilst I have my first coffee of the day and I notice that some stories seem to hang around on the landing page for ages, whilst some (which seem important to me) seem to drop off very quickly.

E.g. one of the Hamas hostage stories stayed on the front page for about three days, but the story of obesity costing the NHS almost £100m pa and resulting in thousands of deaths dropped off within hours.

Do they look at how many people read the stories and hold the popular ones?

Perhaps because the cost of obesity to the NHS being £100m is utter bollox, the cost being nearer to £6bn (source: NICE).

https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/ni ... %20society.

[Rockburner]

How do things stay on (or drop off) the front page of news sites?

As I've said before I open the BBC news page as a starting point whilst I have my first coffee of the day and I notice that some stories seem to hang around on the landing page for ages, whilst some (which seem important to me) seem to drop off very quickly.

E.g. one of the Hamas hostage stories stayed on the front page for about three days, but the story of obesity costing the NHS almost £100m pa and resulting in thousands of deaths dropped off within hours.

Do they look at how many people read the stories and hold the popular ones?

Perhaps because the cost of obesity to the NHS being £100m is utter bollox, the cost being nearer to £6bn (source: NICE).

https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/ni ... %20society.

Sorry - isn't that a bit of a derail?

[Mr. Dazzle]

Sorry - isn't that a bit of a derail?

Maybe the RTTL analyticals are broken.

[Rockburner]

Sorry - isn't that a bit of a derail?

Maybe the RTTL analyticals are broken.

You saying irie is a chat-bot?



hmmmmmmmm.........

[irie]

How do things stay on (or drop off) the front page of news sites?

As I've said before I open the BBC news page as a starting point whilst I have my first coffee of the day and I notice that some stories seem to hang around on the landing page for ages, whilst some (which seem important to me) seem to drop off very quickly.

E.g. one of the Hamas hostage stories stayed on the front page for about three days, but the story of obesity costing the NHS almost £100m pa and resulting in thousands of deaths dropped off within hours.

Do they look at how many people read the stories and hold the popular ones?

Perhaps because the cost of obesity to the NHS being £100m is utter bollox, the cost being nearer to £6bn (source: NICE).

https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/ni ... %20society.

Sorry - isn't that a bit of a derail?

No, it's a correction.

hth

[Rockburner]

Perhaps because the cost of obesity to the NHS being £100m is utter bollox, the cost being nearer to £6bn (source: NICE).

https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/ni ... %20society.

Sorry - isn't that a bit of a derail?

No, it's a correction.

hth

If we're being pedantic, it's a derail of the thread: because the thread is not about the contents of any given story on any given news-website, it's about how those stories are arranged/viewed by each user: a feature of the news website which is controlled by "some given algorithm" controlled by the purveyor of said news stories. That was the original point of discussion; the contents/headline of any given example story in the o.p. is utterly irrelevant to this thread.

To pick up on a specific stated example and choose to correct it, utterly out of context, could almost be seen as "pursuing an agenda" (or "banging a drum", or even possibly "flogging a dead horse" (damn - I could have sworn we had a smilie for that).

It's just not what I would have done, but hey, it's a free world.

[Count Steer]

Sorry - isn't that a bit of a derail?

No, it's a correction.

hth

If we're being pedantic, it's a derail of the thread: because the thread is not about the contents of any given story on any given news-website, it's about how those stories are arranged/viewed by each user: a feature of the news website which is controlled by "some given algorithm" controlled by the purveyor of said news stories. That was the original point of discussion; the contents/headline of any given example story in the o.p. is utterly irrelevant to this thread.

To pick up on a specific stated example and choose to correct it, utterly out of context, could almost be seen as "pursuing an agenda" (or "banging a drum", or even possibly "flogging a dead horse" (damn - I could have sworn we had a smilie for that).

It's just not what I would have done, but hey, it's a free world.

[irie]

Sorry - isn't that a bit of a derail?

No, it's a correction.

hth

If we're being pedantic, it's a derail of the thread: because the thread is not about the contents of any given story on any given news-website, it's about how those stories are arranged/viewed by each user: a feature of the news website which is controlled by "some given algorithm" controlled by the purveyor of said news stories. That was the original point of discussion; the contents/headline of any given example story in the o.p. is utterly irrelevant to this thread.

To pick up on a specific stated example and choose to correct it, utterly out of context, could almost be seen as "pursuing an agenda" (or "banging a drum", or even possibly "flogging a dead horse" (damn - I could have sworn we had a smilie for that).

It's just not what I would have done, but hey, it's a free world.

You have missed the point, which was that perhaps the reason the story was withdrawn so quickly by the BBC was because of the grossly inaccurate quoted cost of obesity to the NHS.

[Rockburner]

No, it's a correction.

hth

If we're being pedantic, it's a derail of the thread: because the thread is not about the contents of any given story on any given news-website, it's about how those stories are arranged/viewed by each user: a feature of the news website which is controlled by "some given algorithm" controlled by the purveyor of said news stories. That was the original point of discussion; the contents/headline of any given example story in the o.p. is utterly irrelevant to this thread.

To pick up on a specific stated example and choose to correct it, utterly out of context, could almost be seen as "pursuing an agenda" (or "banging a drum", or even possibly "flogging a dead horse" (damn - I could have sworn we had a smilie for that).

It's just not what I would have done, but hey, it's a free world.

You have missed the point, which was that perhaps the reason the story was withdrawn so quickly by the BBC was because of the grossly inaccurate quoted cost of obesity to the NHS.

That may well have explained why the story disappeared quickly, however it's not a guaranteed reason (as said, the algorithms can be odd).

Would have been useful if you'd made your point in that way in your first post, instead of appearing to be making a totally different point.

[irie]

If we're being pedantic, it's a derail of the thread: because the thread is not about the contents of any given story on any given news-website, it's about how those stories are arranged/viewed by each user: a feature of the news website which is controlled by "some given algorithm" controlled by the purveyor of said news stories. That was the original point of discussion; the contents/headline of any given example story in the o.p. is utterly irrelevant to this thread.

To pick up on a specific stated example and choose to correct it, utterly out of context, could almost be seen as "pursuing an agenda" (or "banging a drum", or even possibly "flogging a dead horse" (damn - I could have sworn we had a smilie for that).

It's just not what I would have done, but hey, it's a free world.

You have missed the point, which was that perhaps the reason the story was withdrawn so quickly by the BBC was because of the grossly inaccurate quoted cost of obesity to the NHS.

That may well have explained why the story disappeared quickly, however it's not a guaranteed reason (as said, the algorithms can be odd).

Would have been useful if you'd made your point in that way in your first post, instead of appearing to be making a totally different point.

I did say that ^^^ in my first post!!!

E.g. one of the Hamas hostage stories stayed on the front page for about three days, but the story of obesity costing the NHS almost £100m pa and resulting in thousands of deaths dropped off within hours.

Perhaps because the cost of obesity to the NHS being £100m is utter bollox, the cost being nearer to £6bn (source: NICE).