Understanding Article Traffic Sources as a news media publisher is an absolute necessity for a number reasons. One of the most obvious reasons, is the eminent need in applying different optimization techniques for every unique traffic source segment. Optimizing for increased Search or increased Social Media performance is surely different – to the extent where you might actually damage another traffic source segment if using the incorrect methodology.

I personally tend to work with 5-8 Article Traffic Source segments when discussing data with news media publishers – sources like Search, Social Media, but also News Aggregators and News Originators. Some of these segments are de-facto defined by todays Web Analytics solutions, but News Aggregators and News Originators are rarely if ever included in that mix. I am most sure both you and I, have an opinion about how to classify referring URLs – at a level where referring traffic from Google News becomes News Aggregator traffic, and that traffic from The New York Times ends up in the News Originator segment.

The apparent black and white classification is achievable without much debate, but it is those web properties on the fringes that need a proper rule set for classification, where one can prove whether it is one or the other. Further to this, a proper rule set provides for automation, which is unquestionably desirable.

I’ve gone with the below set of definitions and unless you tell me I am wrong, the next commentary you see from me, on either of the two segments, will likely to be based on the below.

News Aggregators

Visits from people who arrive from Websites, where more than one-third of their Article Excerpts are outside content (collected or consolidated headlines – manually or automatically. This includes the Associated Press and other wire services). These sites include Google News, Drudge Report, Digg, and Techmeme.

News Originators

Visits from people who arrive from Websites, where two-thirds of their Articles Excerpts are original content. These sites includes The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and Wall Street Journal.

Some Analysts choose to have a classification in between the two, which they name something along the lines of News Commentators, which I decided not to use. If anything, one can think of the News Commentators segment, as aggressive News Aggregators, but news aggregators never the less.

For me there two exciting questions in this; First, do we agree on the definitions? Secondly, which specific segments do you work with, if in news media or similar?

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)