After Google News Spain closed down yesterday, it was found that “external traffic” had fallen 10 to 15 percent, all based on data by Mathew Ingram by Chartbeat. At first, this loss of traffic seems similar to the German news publishers that saw a dramatic traffic loss after their “rich snippets” were removed from Google News. Will there be a comparable impact in Spain as a result of the big change in Google News? At this point, the early data doesn’t suggest so.
Even with all the hubbub of the loss of Google News in Spain, Spanish users will continue to see “in the news” bits in the main search results. Following is a screenshot form Google.es this morning that reflects news about the Pakistan school shooting from publisher El Pais and other news sites.
According to Google, the “en las noticias” box on the SERP will remain where it is. Greg Sterling asks if this is still “Google News”, or simply a highlight of news stories that are relevant to a query. There’s a good chance that it’s probably the latter.