FoxNews.com, USAToday.com Top List of Internet News Sites

July 22, 2014 by Douglas A. McIntyre

FoxNews.com and Gannet Co. Inc.’s (NYSE: GCI) USAToday.com topped a new list of customer satisfaction among news and information sites from a new survey. The results from the new American Customer Satisfaction Index 2014 E-business study are bound to set off more debate about which network or newspaper, and its website, delivers the best news and whether their political leanings are important.

FoxNews.com and USAToday.com had favorable ratings of 76 out of 100, against an industry average of 74. There were two differences between the sites. One is that Fox is a television site and the other is part of a newspaper. The other difference is that the Fox rating plunged from the previous year, down from 82 in 2013. USAToday.com rose from 73.

Behind these two were ABCNews.com at 74 and MSNBC.com at 73, tied with NYTimes.com, the website of the flagship paper of the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT). At the bottom, with scores of 70, were Time Warner Inc.’s (NYSE: TWX) CNN.com and AOL Inc.’s (NYSE: AOL) Huffington Post.

Among search engines measured in the survey, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) was well ahead of its rivals with a score of 83, up from 77 in 2013. Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing had a score of 73, as did its MSN portal. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) had a score of 71 and AOL of 70.

Among social media, Pinterest finished first with a score of 76, followed by Wikipedia at 74. At the bottom of the list were Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) and LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) with scores of 67.

Oddly enough, the website for the largest news network in terms of ratings in its category finished first. The largest social network was not as fortunate.

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