‘Exclusive is illusive’: U.K. publishers launch plan to mitigate loss of traffic when sources aren’t properly cited

In the absence of links to original sources, the significant impact on publishers’ traffic, and the associated revenues, are irrefutable. That’s the view of publishers in the U.K. who have come together via trade body the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) to back a standardized way to cite sources. 

The protocol revolves around an email process whereby those publishers who have registered for it are able to contact other publishers who have not cited exclusive content they’ve produced so that it can be updated. While this could be done without the protocol, it would arguably be a disjointed process defined by each publisher’s own way of doing things. Different publishers will have different email addresses for who needs to be contacted in these instances, for example.

The AOP’s proposed new way of doing things tries to negate this from ever happening again. In theory, the publishers would all use emails that follow the same format when dealing with issues over fair attribution — e.g. attribution@thepublisher.co.uk, for example. 

Here’s how the process would work in practice: if publisher X noticed that publisher Y quoted or referenced an exclusive article without linking back to it, then the former would email the latter via the specific attribution email to let them know it happened. From there, publisher Y would make a call on whether it needed to add the appropriate link. If it does, the update is made, with the hyperlink anchor text being the title of the cited publication (e.g. publisher X). All links to original content should be follow links, not no-follow so that search engines pay attention to the page and subsequently boost its ranking. No-follow links get no love. 

“Every publisher wants its original reporting to get the visibility in search results, especially the top stories, that they deserve,” said Carly Steven, head of SEO at The Sun. “Unfortunately we don’t feel like that’s always the case. Despite Google’s best efforts to try and reward original content, there are inconsistencies in the way publishers have been linking to and identifying the original source of stories.”

As much as this is about giving credit where it’s due, there’s also a commercial incentive. Linking is key for SEO. Google uses links from prominent sites as a gauge for what it calls ‘authoritativeness’ — a key factor in determining ranking.