Don't want to go through the entire article? Here's a summary:
This analysis is the first in a series where we analyze some popular websites/facebook groups. Although we provide a lot of information in this article, we are primarily interested in the reliability and the legitimacy of portals when it comes to reporting news. Choose your news sources wisely!
Company: DC Nepal
Website: http://www.dcnepal.com/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/dc.nepal
Let’s look at the basic information about the website first. Please note that every fact listed in this review is publicly available information – the citations follow the article.
This analysis is the first in a series where we analyze some popular websites/facebook groups. Although we provide a lot of information in this article, we are primarily interested in the reliability and the legitimacy of portals when it comes to reporting news. Choose your news sources wisely!
Company: DC Nepal
Website: http://www.dcnepal.com/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/dc.nepal
Let’s look at the basic information about the website first. Please note that every fact listed in this review is publicly available information – the citations follow the article.
Now let’s take a look at the traffic statistics of the website. DCNepal is ranked #33,107 globally. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors to this site and page views on this site over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and page views is ranked #1.
These numbers look great, right? Well, except when you look at how engaged visitors are, the analysis kind of changes. The bounce rate for this website is 71.20 % - as in 71.20 % of visitors navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate generally implies that the website isn’t effective in encouraging their visitors to continue with their visit.
The following chart partially explains the high bounce rate. A lot of visitors who visit this website are directed here from their facebook page. The admins of their facebook page are pretty active and post upwards of a hundred posts daily.
These numbers look great, right? Well, except when you look at how engaged visitors are, the analysis kind of changes. The bounce rate for this website is 71.20 % - as in 71.20 % of visitors navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate generally implies that the website isn’t effective in encouraging their visitors to continue with their visit.
The following chart partially explains the high bounce rate. A lot of visitors who visit this website are directed here from their facebook page. The admins of their facebook page are pretty active and post upwards of a hundred posts daily.
These guys are constantly updating their facebook news feed to cater to the needs of 1.5m fans, and updating and keeping up with their website. All this hard work must be worth it, right? Here are the traffic worth estimates:
Not bad, right?
A lot of the visitors landing on their website are directed there from their facebook page. We also looked at what kind of a reach their facebook page has. DC Nepal's facebook page is one of the most popular pages in Nepal with a following of 1.5 million people. It is also one of the fastest growing pages - the page has grown by 28 k in the last week 130 k in the last month. Here's a chart showing this growth in the number of fans over the last month.
A lot of the visitors landing on their website are directed there from their facebook page. We also looked at what kind of a reach their facebook page has. DC Nepal's facebook page is one of the most popular pages in Nepal with a following of 1.5 million people. It is also one of the fastest growing pages - the page has grown by 28 k in the last week 130 k in the last month. Here's a chart showing this growth in the number of fans over the last month.
Our purpose in starting with the detailed analysis of the website/facebook group’s reach is to establish that these numbers are in fact important. 1.5 million people log into their facebook accounts (almost) everyday and consume part of their daily news from this website. The impact of this group is tremendous, and the moolah they take home for all their work isn’t bad either. This raises the obvious question – how trustworthy is their news?
Here is what we found.
We went on a finishing trip in DC Nepal’s facebook page. We didn’t have the time or energy to look at every news article published there, but we did peruse through quite a few of them. Among the articles we did look at, here are some observations:
Clickbait factor: Very High
The website’s design is atrocious, but that analysis is beyond the scope of this article. Every post on Dc Nepal’s facebook page leads you to their website. Almost every post claims to have a video that goes with the news. Half of them don’t have videos. What they do have is a youtube video-like thing that leads to an advertisement. Even the pages that do have videos have a giant block of ad first. Here's an example - we have adblocks installed in our browsers, so this doesn't give a full picture of the actual number of ads thrown at you.
Here is what we found.
We went on a finishing trip in DC Nepal’s facebook page. We didn’t have the time or energy to look at every news article published there, but we did peruse through quite a few of them. Among the articles we did look at, here are some observations:
Clickbait factor: Very High
The website’s design is atrocious, but that analysis is beyond the scope of this article. Every post on Dc Nepal’s facebook page leads you to their website. Almost every post claims to have a video that goes with the news. Half of them don’t have videos. What they do have is a youtube video-like thing that leads to an advertisement. Even the pages that do have videos have a giant block of ad first. Here's an example - we have adblocks installed in our browsers, so this doesn't give a full picture of the actual number of ads thrown at you.
A lot of their facebook posts are images from Nepal. The facebook posts read “ Click on this link to view more images”. A third of the time there are no more images, only more ads.
Their choices of titles are very click-baity too. We will let you look through their facebook page to look at all of them – some of them are outright hilarious. Here is an example.
Their choices of titles are very click-baity too. We will let you look through their facebook page to look at all of them – some of them are outright hilarious. Here is an example.
One may argue that that’s how the Internet is these days. You ought to lure in people some way, and a click-baity title is more effective than other methods. The DC Nepal people need to make money as well, so ads are their only way of doing so. It would be easy to look past that if they were actually doing service to the general populace with the news they report.
1) On Thursday evening, some intellectual from California contributed an article to the website claiming that there was a probability of an earthquake of magnitude 7. What he didn’t mention is that the probability was 0.0001% (according to the latest advisory from USGS). As is common with most news posted to this facebook page, most people didn’t read the article and were freaked out after seeing the headline. Few that did were enraged, and angry facebook comments started piling up. The article was removed soon after (before we got a chance to take a screenshot of the article).
2) The facebook page constantly publishes images that link to news articles from other parts of the world. These images are generally of volcanoes, landslides, destruction of physical property, etc. What they don’t mention in the headlines is location of the disaster – their headline in the last such article read “Destructive pictures of landslides”. At a time like this when there is so much uncertainty and fear instilled in people, these articles do a tremendous disservice to the general population.
1) On Thursday evening, some intellectual from California contributed an article to the website claiming that there was a probability of an earthquake of magnitude 7. What he didn’t mention is that the probability was 0.0001% (according to the latest advisory from USGS). As is common with most news posted to this facebook page, most people didn’t read the article and were freaked out after seeing the headline. Few that did were enraged, and angry facebook comments started piling up. The article was removed soon after (before we got a chance to take a screenshot of the article).
2) The facebook page constantly publishes images that link to news articles from other parts of the world. These images are generally of volcanoes, landslides, destruction of physical property, etc. What they don’t mention in the headlines is location of the disaster – their headline in the last such article read “Destructive pictures of landslides”. At a time like this when there is so much uncertainty and fear instilled in people, these articles do a tremendous disservice to the general population.
Here's another news article that is more than a month old. They just mention that a man was beaten to death. They don't mention the location or the date of the incident.
Well, let's click on the link and figure out exactly what happened. This is what the link leads to:
We won't comment on the sheer ridiculousness of this situation. They do have what looks like a video right under this gibberish (well, gibberish to most Nepali people). Here is what it looks like:
Click on it and where does it lead to? The same gibberish from earlier! Now, we don't want to make any assumptions, but it is fairly clear that the purpose of this news article is to rile people up.
Our verdict: UNFOLLOW DCNEPAL ! This isn’t the worst site on the web at the moment and there’s some useful information , but it’s just a baffling shame that users need to scroll past numerous pieces of ads to get there. The clickbaity titles and fake images are clearly intended to rile people up and instill fear in them. Lastly, and more importantly, it is absolutely despicable that a page with a following of 1.5 million publishes baseless rumors about the earthquake. It's an ignominy that these people make the money the do by providing such disservice to the general population.
The website stats are from alexa.com and siteworthtraffic.com. The facebook stats are from socialbakers.com. Want any news article/news source fact-checked? Send us a message!
Our verdict: UNFOLLOW DCNEPAL ! This isn’t the worst site on the web at the moment and there’s some useful information , but it’s just a baffling shame that users need to scroll past numerous pieces of ads to get there. The clickbaity titles and fake images are clearly intended to rile people up and instill fear in them. Lastly, and more importantly, it is absolutely despicable that a page with a following of 1.5 million publishes baseless rumors about the earthquake. It's an ignominy that these people make the money the do by providing such disservice to the general population.
The website stats are from alexa.com and siteworthtraffic.com. The facebook stats are from socialbakers.com. Want any news article/news source fact-checked? Send us a message!