Sunday, May 14, 2006

Trends in Israeli news sources

There is a new service from google, called "Trends". It allows you to compare frequencies of searches for different things on the internet. So, I thought it would be an interesting idea to compare israeli online news media. Lets take a look:



Legend: Blue: haaretz, red: maariv, orange: a7 (I didn't pick it, I promise!), green: jerusalem post, violet: ynet.

Notice how the a7, the right wing portal of the seventh channel radio in israel, beats or on par with any other news source except the very popular ynet. However, if we take a look at region distribution we see that in israel itself a7 is merely a blip on a radar - not unread, but not a significant presence either. Conclusion: it's popularity comes from the overseas. Indeed, in several countries, like (surprise) France, Germany, Italy e.t.c it is much more popular then any other news source. In germany in particular it's popularity is overwhelming. One would think that since a7 has a russian version of their portal, and germany is filled with russian jews, that has to be the reason. However, google claims that the queries were made in german and dutch. How is a7 in german? Hm... can this be attributed to ambiguity of a7 query? I wouldn't rush to this conclusion, since google is very good at guessing what you mean (trust me, I know the algorithm, and saw the stats). The mystery however, remains.

5 comments:

Irina Tsukerman said...

Why would anyone trust you? ; )

Anyway, maybe they are checking it out just to see what's the fuss all around. Many American Jews don't take A7 seriously because... well, it's right-wing.

Unknown said...

if that was the case it wouldn't generate so much traffic. I mean, it tops the *readership* traffic of other news sites. Just how many people are checking the fuss, on a daily basis? :)

Oleh Yahshan said...

A7 has a big name in the international world.

In Israel it's just a small other source - and not always very reliable. While other papers try to stay center - A7 makes no such attempt.
I can tell you that I personnoly do not read or trust what they write - I read maariv (nrg - online).
I also don't know how well it checks hebrew sources - and also remember that maariv online is not at maariv.co.il it's at nrg.co.il

Unknown said...

Interesting, I didn't know about this. personally I read nfc.co.il, and debka.co.il. Many people do not trust debka, but I see no reason not to.

Oleh Yahshan said...

yury,
Debka is very lightwaight.