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Google News Updates Algorithm: Sourcing Story Updates & Local Context To News

The Google News Blog announced they have updated their algorithms to become more relevant and fresh with news.


The first change Google describe is where they’ll told us about is that they’ll look to an original breaking source to see if it has new updates, then try to feature those. If not, then updates to a story from other sources will get play.

In another change, Google is trying to highlight local sources more, for when there are relevant local stories.

This all comes at a time when New York Times executive editor Bill Keller warns readers that Google News and similar sources can contain “unreliable” news “from a lot of less dependable sources.”

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

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