SEL: Google News to Favor Corporate Media Sites?

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May 02, 2005

Google News to Favor Corporate Media Sites?

The New Standard summarizes a recent report from the New Scientist that suggest Google News may modify its news algorithm in order to favor those sites deemed credible.

Why the change?

...articles carrying more authority, say from CNN or the BBC, can be ousted from the first page of results, simply because they are not as recent or as relevant to the keyword entered in the search line.

Now Google..plans to build a database that will compare the track record and credibility of all news sources around the world, and adjust the ranking of any search results accordingly.

You'll hear a lot of bloggers up-in-arms about the development, why? Google News can account for a good percentage of a small news site's traffic. Many small publications know this and churn out news at an alarming rate, in hopes of getting syndicated in Google News. A single story on Google News can help a small news site generate enough page views to keep advertisers happy.

There are many great news sites out there, that are small and cater to a niche audience (I'd like to think we fall into that category). Unfortunately, there are an equal number of sites that simply churn out crap or re-publish stories verbatim.

What Google giveth, Google can taketh away.

Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |

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