FT leads the way for Google+ followers but Mail and Telegraph get most +1s
The Financial Times has more Google+ followers than any other UK national newspaper website.
But it is stories from the Daily Mail and the Telegraph which are most often recommended by Google+ users.
That is according a new study of 13 top UK national newspapers on Google+, which the web giant claims now has more than 100m signed-up user accounts.
The research was conducted by search and social analytics company Searchmetrics.
Nine of the 13 UK newspapers analysed had created Google+ pages at the time of the study (19 March 2012), with a combined total of 544,545 followers. No official Google+ page could be found for The Times, The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Star.
This compares with a total of 1,284,674 followers (fans) on Facebook, currently the world’s biggest social network, for which all 13 newspaper sites maintain official pages.
372,159 people were recorded as following the Financial Times’ page on Google+ (or having the newspaper’s page in their Google+ ‘Circles’) beating the Guardian’s page which came second with 75,255 followers. The Independent came third with 60,195 people having its page in their Google+ circles.
Weekly data from Searchmetrics showed stories and content from the dailymail.co.uk received the most +1 recommendations, with approximately 10,493 +1s a week on average.
Second came the Telegraph with around 5,822 +1s a week and third the Guardian (approx 3,367+1s a week).
While the Financial Times may have the most followers, FT.com only averages around 670 +1s a week, although this may have something to do with its paywall restrictions.
“Google+ is still a relatively young social network but Google is very positive about its future and we’re already seeing a large number of people on the site, so it’s important for newspapers and other big brands to get in early and have a strong presence on the network,” said Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics’ CTO and founder.
The most frequently +1’d article on Dailymail.co.uk was shown to be a story (with images) about how the majority of runway models meet the Body Mass Index (BMI) criteria for anorexia, which had been +1’d 837 times.