How NigeriaBrowser works
Here's where our stories come from, what we show, and how we decide the order they appear in.
Where stories come from
Stories come from the public RSS feeds that publishers make available for exactly this purpose. Our feed reader, NigeriaBrowserBot, checks each feed about every 15 minutes and follows each publisher's robots.txt rules. If a publisher asks us not to read their site, we don't.
What we show
- The headline, exactly as the publisher wrote it
- A short summary taken from the publisher's own feed
- The publisher's picture for the story, loaded from the publisher's website
- The publisher's name and the time the story was published
We never copy full articles. Tapping a story takes you to the publisher's website to read it.
Grouping reports of the same event
Big stories are often covered by several outlets. When NigeriaBrowser finds reports that describe the same event, it groups them together. The publisher who reported it first leads the group, and the others are listed under "Also covered by", so you can read more than one account.
How stories are ordered
Each story group gets a score based on three things:
- How recent it is. Newer stories rank higher. Breaking news fades faster than business, tech or entertainment stories.
- How widely it's covered. A story reported by many publishers is usually one more people want to know about.
- Reader interest. Stories people open get a small lift. This is capped, so a headline can't rise on clicks alone.
After scoring, we apply a fairness rule: no publisher can lead more than two stories in any run of twenty. This keeps the page varied and gives smaller publishers a fair chance to be seen. Publishers can't pay for placement.
Sections
Each story is placed in the section that fits it best: News, Politics, Business, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, Education, Health, World or Opinion. We use the category the publisher gave the story, the words in its headline and summary, and the publisher's usual subject. Top stories brings all sections together.
Corrections and removal
We show headlines and summaries as publishers provide them. If a publisher corrects a story, the change appears here when their feed updates. To ask for a story or a whole site to be removed, please contact us.