ProtoThema is now included among the international examples promoted by Google for the use of Artificial Intelligence in digital news media, through an in-depth case study published by the US technology giant.

Google presents ProtoThema as the leading Greek news organisation leveraging Artificial Intelligence to improve its journalistic processes and enhance reader experience and engagement, adopting a pioneering, technologically advanced approach to modern digital news delivery.

Read the full case study

“Continuous adaptation to industry changes”

As stated, “ProtoThema, which began its journey as a Sunday newspaper in 2005, is today the largest online news organisation in Greece, attracting approximately 1.5 million unique visitors daily in a country of 10 million residents. Its success has been based on its continuous adaptation to changes in the industry, from the transition to digital news to the dominance of video on social media.”

“Today, it collaborates with the Google News Initiative and FT Strategies, aiming to lead in the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence in online news. At the forefront of this effort is Cloudevo, the technology company created by the ProtoThema digital development team,” Google notes.

“ProtoThema has a strong technological orientation,” says Senior Manager at FT Strategies Aliya Itzkowitz. “It is not afraid to test new technologies and adopts them faster than many traditional publishing organisations.”

As noted in Google’s detailed case study, “since 2024, the collaboration has led to the development of a series of innovative applications aimed at adapting ProtoThema’s websites to the new challenges of news reporting, addressing user fatigue from information overload and responding to the growing demand for a seamless digital experience.”

At the same time, the aim is to reduce the time that the organisation’s approximately 300 journalists spend on repetitive administrative tasks, allowing them to focus more on reporting and writing. To this end, the ProtoThema team integrated Gemini and the Gemini Enterprise Agent into its existing technological infrastructure.

Commenting on the collaboration, Google News Partnerships Manager for Southern Europe Camila Samilian said: “It is truly impressive to see ProtoThema adopting such an innovative and forward-looking approach, testing new technologies and redefining the news experience.”

Immediate comment moderation and smarter search

Google highlights one of the first major achievements of the collaboration as the automation of the comment moderation process. Using a specially designed algorithm for the Greek language, developed with the help of Gemini, the need for time-consuming manual moderation has been eliminated.

According to the case study, thanks to automation the platform can now handle up to 320,000 comments per month, compared with 30,000 previously, while the time required for publication has been reduced from several hours to just 90 seconds.

Subsequently, according to Google, ProtoThema launched its English-language edition, aiming to strengthen its international presence. Through an automated workflow, the most popular articles are translated and integrated into the publishing platform, while final editing is carried out by journalists to ensure content accuracy. In this way, editors can devote more time to reporting and writing.

Google further notes that the search functionality of the English edition was upgraded after previously creating difficulties for users. To address this issue, a semantic search tool was developed, allowing users to formulate queries in natural language.

All answers are based exclusively on ProtoThema’s journalistic content, maintaining the reliability and credibility of the information.

According to Google, the new feature led to a 20% increase in search-driven traffic, with the search page now ranking among the three most popular pages of the English-language website. The same technology is now also being applied to the Greek edition.

Google reports that the innovations did not stop there. To enhance reader engagement, related article recommendations were added at the end of each publication. As highlighted in the case study, this feature increased both article views and user dwell time by 10%, while total visits rose by 20%.

At the same time, for users who primarily access news via mobile devices, ProtoThema added an “AI Takeaways” section to each article, summarising the key points of the content.

According to Google, these short summaries act as an incentive for readers to continue reading the article and contributed to reducing the bounce rate from 60% to 47%.