More Evidence that News Corp. Would Be Nuts to Shun Google

(MoneyWatch)  As I've been watching from the sidelines while Rupert Murdoch attempts to slug it out with Google, one question keeps occurring: what would be the real impact of a News Corp.-free Google? Would we notice? Would we care?

The answer is no for most of us, as several organizations that put stats to the issue make obvious. Jeff Jarvis over at BuzzMachine has a post about what would happen if most of the German publishing industry left Google, per German consultancy, The Reach Group. The discussion is academic, except for the fact that the publishers involved -- 148 of them -- all signed the Hamburg Declaration, what looks so far to be a fruitless attempt to change intellectual property rights to deal with those pesky search engines.

The result? All 1000 domains owned by these publishers represent only a five percent share of the first ten Google results, which, if you're keeping score at home, equates to 1/2 of a search result in the top ten. News Corp., although huge, probably doesn't even control 1000 domains. As an interesting aside, the TRG study also calculates that Wikipedia has a 13 percent share of market for the no. 1 search results, a statistic that the rest of the content creation community can only dream of.

Five percent is bad enough, but at a certain point way before you get that low, diminishing returns start to kick in. We all know that the majority of clicks go to the top links, so if a single-digit share is all you've got, the chances of you even being a top five link start to get pretty low. But it shows the power of Google that it is still, by far, the most important piece of almost everyone's traffic, no matter who you are and no matter how low your traffic is. Per some Hitwise data [via TechCrunch and BuzzMachine], Google and Google News deliver 27 percent of News Corp.'s traffic. Any absence of News Corp. content from Google is the media conglomerate's loss, not Google's, or ours. With rare exception, we'll just click on other stuff that will provide comparable content.

Beyond his concerns about intellectual copyrights, I wonder if part of what is going on in Rupert Murdoch's mind is denial; it's hard to admit that a search engine could become so important to your online well being; but from the lowliest blogger, like myself, to a publication like The Wall Street Journal, a healthy chunk of traffic comes because of Google, not because those visiting your site sought your publication or a particular reporter. Hell, it's often jarring to think how much of writing a post is taken up with the task of pleasing the algorithm rather than the people who might read the post. All of this, for those of us who grew up in traditional media, is difficult to swallow at times, but, as Murdoch will soon find out, no firewall will help block a content provider from that truth.

BTW, if you've never seen the interview that started it all, here it is: Murdoch's interview with his own Sky News.

Previous coverage of News Corp. and Google at BNET Media:

• News Corp. Execs Shocked at WSJ's Leaky Backdoor
• Legal Experts on How Murdoch's Threats May Impact "Fair Use" Doctrine
• Now it's Murdoch vs. the World as He Threatens to Sue the BBC
• Murdoch Plays High-Stakes Game of Chicken with Google