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Do People Search for “Breaking News”?

June 9, 2009 by Adam Sherk

Among news sites “breaking news” is a sought-after keyword phrase; I see it prominently placed in home page title tags all the time:

CNN.com home page title tag

NYTimes.com home page title tag

FoxNews.com home page title tag

Time.com home page title tag

And it’s not just general news sites. “Breaking news” is featured in the title tags of sites covering sports, entertainment and a wide range of topics.

Seeing this term targeted so often got me wondering, does anyone actually search for “breaking news”?

If I’m looking for breaking news on a particular topic I’ll search with queries using that topic, for example “Air France crash” or “Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court.”

And if I want to get an overview of the current news of the day I’ll go to Google News or Yahoo! News or direct navigate to a major news site. But I don’t think I’d ever simply type “breaking news” into a search engine.

However according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool some people do:

Google monthly search volume for breaking news

Currently CNN.com and MSNBC.com are the top two listings in Google for “breaking news.” It would be interesting to learn how much search engine traffic they are getting from that specific term.

Google results for breaking news

Related posts:

  1. Has Search Interest in Celebrity Gossip Peaked?
  2. Blog Tag Optimization Tips for News Sites
  3. Real-time Search Optimization for News Sites
  4. Hitwise Reports News and Media’s Share of Search-Referred Traffic Declining
  5. Pew Research News Survey: Findings on Search Engines, Social Networks and Twitter

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About Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk is an SEO and PR consultant helping publishers with digital strategy and audience development, including enterprise SEO, public relations and social media marketing.

Adam is VP SEO and Digital Strategy for Define Media Group.

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