Echo Publications is happy to report that Echonetdaily has now been accredited by Google to appear in their Google News search results. This means that a wider readership is much more likely to find news on echo.net.au, substantially increasing page views and naturally increasing hits to advertisers on the site.
The average weekly unique visitors to the site for the two months prior to Google accreditation was 11,371. The two weeks after accreditation have shown a marked increase with 21,789 and 25,827 unique visitors (average 23,808).
We have also just sailed past the milestone of our one-millionth page view since relaunching Echonetdaily on August 26 last year.
We surveyed our online readers in January and found that 90 per cent of the some 450 respondents gave extremely positive feedback for their experience of navigation of the site, coverage of local stories and appearance and content. Other interesting points from the survey include:
• 25 per cent of Echonetdaily visitors only read their news online;
• 67 per cent of our readership is female;
• 89 per cent live in the northern rivers (that may change with the Google accreditation);
• 48 per cent are the owner/decision-maker of a business; and
• close to 50 per cent of the people who read Echonetdaily do so every day.
Since the creation of the original newspaper, The Brunswick Valley Echo, in 1986, we’ve been dedicated to improving the news service, the technology used and the benefits to both readers and advertisers. Echonetdaily has proven to be a vital part of Echo Publications’ expanding news reach, along with The Byron Shire Echo, which can also be read online.
