It recently disclosed that India Times was the most-effective English language publisher on Facebook in terms of shares, ahead of NBC and Fox News (with the Daily Mail in seventh and the BBC in eighth). It analysed the optimum length of a story for maximum shares and found that the sweet spot for the New York Times audience is 1,021 words, but for the BBC it's 721 and for the Huffington Post it's 641.
The firm's analysis of traffic metrics from 2,756 news sites around the world, 797 in the US, shows a painfully steep drop in Google search traffic over the last year: 33% worldwide and 38% in the US. Much of that drop, especially outside the US, happened after Google began rolling out AI Overview search results that provide a software-generated, multi-paragraph answer, in which you often have to click additional times to see links to the sources Google drew on for that reply.
The goal is to create a more conversational, AI-driven homepage that will function more like a utility for users, boosting time spent on-site and helping counter the drop in search referrals, according to Bharat Krish, chief product officer at Newsweek. The homepage will be designed to be customized to each user, not just those logged into the site. Visitors will be greeted with local weather, a news briefing summary and stocks, based on their geolocation. The homepage is still in development and likely won't be ready until next spring at the earliest, Krish said. Newsweek is currently conducting audience research on it. ("We don't want to assume that [this is] what everybody wants," he said.)
The European Commission on Thursday said it was launching a new investigation into US-based search engine Google amid accusations that the company buries some news sites in its search results as spam. The EU's case revolves around media outlets that include content from commercial partners, for example sponsored editorials. Google is once again facing the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) that regulates online competition in the 27-member bloc.
Meta and other tech companies refusing to sign content deals with Australian news outlets face millions in new fines, with Labor's proposed media bargaining incentive set to impose penalties based on the local revenue of major platforms. Large social media and search platforms with Australian-derived revenue of at least $250m will be subject to the new rules, irrespective of whether they carry news content, according to new detail released by the assistant treasurer, Daniel Mulino.
Last month, The Atlantic dropped the latest investigation in its ongoing series on generative AI training data sets. Staff writer Alex Reisner found that at least 15 million YouTube videos had been used for training data by major technology companies, either for research or, in some cases, to build AI video products.
Since the launch of Google AI Overviews in May 2024, zero-click search grew by 13 percentage points, reaching 69% in May 2025, while organic traffic to news sites declined significantly.
