Penza, 6 February 2017. PenzaNews. The news agency PenzaNews confirmed its leadership in the news segment having become once again the most quoted mass media in the Penza region according to the Yandex company.

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As before, the independent media resource occupies the first position in the Penza mass media rating. After the latest update of Yandex data, which occurred last week, the PenzaNews citation index equals to 1,800 points.

The second place is occupied by the website PenzaInform, which is not officially registered and is associated with the TV and Radio Company “Nash Dom”. It has 100 points less than PenzaNews.

The top three also includes the agency Penza-Press, which belongs to the media holding “Express” controlled by the regional government. Despite the active promotion of the Internet resource by the federal medium Gazeta.ru, which according to observers, during several months has referred to the Penza-Press news items about crimes and traffic accidents, the citation index of the regional portal remained at the same level – 1500 points.

According to IT sphere specialists, it is possible that the result of such activity will be visible only in several months – in case Yandex does not impose restrictions or filters for frequent references on the same resource. However, according to some experts, even in case of a rapid and considerable increase of the index, it will hardly be possible to say that this data is "crystal clear" and its comparison to the number of points received by other portals will be useless.

The pro-government news website Penzenskaya pravda, which at the beginning of December, 2016, had 1500 points and shared the second place with Penza-Press, dropped nearly twice and now has 800 points. Thus, it lost to the website of the TV channel Express (850 points) and to the information portal Pnz.ru (1100 points), which was the least popular Internet resource in the region several years ago.

Other news websites including those that work on the information market for a long time, such as State TV and Radio Broadcasting Company “Penza”, have relatively low citation indexes – from 650 to 190 points and even less.

According to a number of experts of the professional media community, the top three of Penza websites – PenzaNews, PenzaInform, and Penza-Press – was formed over 5 years ago and it will hardly change in the nearest future. Changes are possible only within the group. It is hardly possible that other portals including newly formed ones will enter it.
Specialists think that the information produced daily by the three above-mentioned news resources creates the main news trends in the Penza region and has credibility of journalists of federal and foreign mass media, which is proved by high citation indexes of these portals.

According to public data, at present, there are about 50 website involved in news business in the Penza region. Analysts note that the information market of the region is oversaturated but there is nothing catastrophic in it: the weak players will soon leave it, while the strong ones will continue their dynamic development.

Thematic Citation Index (TIC) is a technology employed by Yandex to determine the credibility of Internet resources in a quantitative output, based on the quality of links from other websites rather than quality.

TIC is calculated using a proprietary algorithm that takes into account thematic content of the resource and the linking sites.