19 May 2010 | Author: J. Morton News Editor

Yahoo! News expands coverage with Associated Content grab

After beefing up its news staff in recent months, Yahoo! News is looking to further expand its dominance as the premier location for online news, with the acquisition of Associated Content, a freelance news website.

The deal was announced on Tuesday, and the New York Times has reported that the purchase will be followed by the search and news giant supplementing its own articles with content produced independently by the website, on topics not generally covered by mainstream channels.

According to figures from comScore, April saw 16 million visitors make their way to the Associated Content site, which relies on a freelance staff of nearly 400,000 writers sharing information on a variety of specialist subjects.

Yahoo! has maintained it will continue publishing articles from its own dedicated news writing staff, as well as those from other media outlets, integrating the Associated Content articles throughout its sections where appropriate.

The acquisition "gives us more local gravitas," Yahoo! CEO Carol A Bartz said in an interview following the announcement.

Whilst Yahoo! has made some gains on search seraph Google in recent times, it has suffered an overall loss in advertising revenue in the past few years due to the Mountain View company and social network Facebook.

However, as Yahoo! was declared the top online news outlet in terms of visitors, it stands to reason they will be devoting more resources to strengthening this position. By expanding its local and specialist content, the news service hopes to draw in even more surfers looking for informative articles.

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