Daily PUMA: Google News Search Option, just who is "newsworthy" to be listed, and who is the decider?

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Google News Search Option, just who is "newsworthy" to be listed, and who is the decider?

I am trying to figure out how Google knows the difference between a news article, and a newscraping article. In general, many blogs are of the newscraping variety.

Newscraping means the blog writer reads an already existing news story, or watches a program on television, and then writes about it. This would be considered "newscraping". The blogger didn't create the news story, instead they re-interpreted an existing story from their own viewpoint.

But wait a minute. What if you or I actually do come up with a news story? What if we are the first to report something of note? Will Google News know to include the blog on their Google News search service? I suggest fellow PUMA bloggers do some google research. Write a story about something that you personally witnessed, and then use search words from your article and search Google "news" to see if your story appears.

Daily PUMA wrote an article about the KFI Tax Protest and the content was based on what was being said on a radio program. In many respects this is no different than a press conference in which a reporter never gets to ask a question but uses the responses from other reporters questions to write their own story.

Even though Daily PUMA reported key facts from the radio show that were NOT reported by anybody else anywhere on the internet, the Daily PUMA article DID NOT appear on Google News Search.

Example. KNBC reported that hundreds showed up to the KFI Tax Protest Rally in Fullerton, California. Based on estimates from police officer estimates, it is believed that as many as 15,000 people actually showed up. Daily PUMA was reporting on how inaccurate the television news station was in reporting the attendance, this IS a news story worthy of being on Google News.

Most subscribers to google's key word service are actually subscribing to google news, which appears to mean that our blogs may never be worthy of inclusion to the millions of internet users who use google key word search.