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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Does the BBC dominate online news in the UK?
May 29, 2008
Later today the BBC Trust will release a report that aims to answer the question: does the corporation dominate the online news space at the expense of its commercial rivals? As I write this, the findings aren’t yet known, but the table below may provide some food for thought. It lists the market share of the top 15 news sites in the UK during April, based on their share of UK Internet visits to our News and Media category.
I’ve edited the list so that it contains only pure news sites by removing weather, TV and other non-news media sites. These are the sites I have removed and their market share: BBC Homepage (15.03%), BBC Weather Centre (5.52%), Met Office (1.71%), ITV (1.22%), The Weather Channel US and UK (1.10%, 0.85%), Sky Weather (0.65%), Metcheck (0.57%).
Looking at this data, its certainly true that the BBC has a significant lead over its rivals. However, compared to Google’s almost 90% share of the UK search engine market, it couldn’t be called ‘dominant’. The market share of BBC News in the category has increased slightly over the last 3 years – from 15.70% in April 2005 to 17.27% last month – but at the same time overall visits to the News and Media category have increased at a much faster rate, and most of this increased traffic has gone to non-BBC sites. As the chart below illustrates, the share of Internet visits to our News and Media category has almost doubled over the last three years, which I think points to a healthy and competitive online market in the UK, not one dominated by one player.
Posted by Robin Goad at 08:00 AM
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