The Bradley Stoke Journal was paid a remarkable tribute by Google earlier this week when our stories occupied all ten of the top ten Google News search results for the term “Bradley Stoke“.
Google News is a news aggregator service that brings together stories from selected news sources around the world. Only a limited number of respected websites have their stories included in the Google News index, chosen according to certain characteristics of their news content such as freshness, location, relevance and diversity.
Articles from the Bradley Stoke Journal have been listed in Google News since early 2012. We’re extremely proud of this achievement as, in Google’s own words, it endorses the quality and timeliness of our news content and acknowledges our authority, expertise and high journalistic standards.
A search for “Bradley Stoke” in Google News will typically see the majority of the first page results coming from The Journal, with perhaps one or two coming from the Bristol Post or BBC Bristol, but on Wednesday this week we occupied all ten of the top ten spots [screenshot].
The Editor comments
At a time when traditional news sources are cutting back on truly local news coverage, it’s great to see Google acknowledge our achievements.
The Bristol Post (formerly the Evening Post) recently axed its Saturday edition and has cut back massively on staff, while the freebie Bristol Observer rarely contains any Bradley Stoke news at all – but The Journal continues to go from strength to strength, with readership up by 35% since the start of 2012.
According to our web server statistics, the BSJ website currently receives around 1.15 million hits every month.
In the past year we have launched new Journal websites covering Patchway, Stoke Gifford and Filton and we have established significant followings on Facebook and Twitter. We have also welcomed a number of new reporters and photographers keen to make a contribution to their local communities.
We’re clearly doing plenty of things right but if there’s anything you think we’re missing, do please drop us a line via our Contact Us page.
