Back in November 2009, Google News announced they were “in the midst of an exciting transition period” that included a change to the News Sitemap Protocol. News publishers have through April 2010 to modify their News Sitemap to accommodate the new format. What’s so exciting and transitional? I asked Google, thinking that they were changing […]
Google announced they have added a new supported user agent that can be used to block Google from indexing stories specifically on Google News. You can now specific the user agent Googlebot-News in your robots.txt file to exclude documents from being crawled and displayed in Google News. Google has several user agents for controlling how […]
Google’s “First Click Free” (FCF) policy was intended to provide a better experience for Google users and for premium content and news publishers (e.g., the Wall Street Journal) by allowing their content to be indexed and exposed for subsequent sale to consumers. However, as most of you are aware, the publisher pay walls are going […]
Bloomberg has a story out suggesting that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News may be joining Rupert Murdoch’s coalition of the willing to block Google. But I don’t think that’s what going on at all, and I’m trying to clarify things. Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group, which publishes the […]
Forget PageRank, at least if you’re a news publisher looking to do well in Google News. Google’s news service doesn’t rely on the same algorithm used by “regular” Google, of which PageRank is a part of. Instead, Google News taps into its own unique ranking signals, which include user clicks, the estimated authority of a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search In Pictures: Google México Party, One Republic @ Google & Pineapple 5K In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people […]
Hey news publishers. Stop acting as if your content only appears printed on dead trees and tap into the dynamics that the web offers. That’s a blunt summary of advice from Josh Cohen of Google News, from a wide-ranging interview with him on Google’s experiments with new ways of delivering news. Cohen, business product manager […]
Want to do a paywall with no “first click free?” That’s fine with Google, says business product manager Josh Cohen. Want to do micropayments? Google will be “flexible” in considering support of new business models like this. But if you charge, expect less traffic, and also expect that your competitors will be “ecstatic” to pick […]
Ambivalent is word that best describes newspaper publishers’ relationship with Google and Google News in particular. Some publishers see Google as a partner or potential partner and some consider Google to be the devil incarnate, responsible for virtually all their woes. For its part Google sees itself as a supporter of newspapers, helping them by […]
It seems like almost everyone in Big Business is looking for a bailout these days. That’s certainly true of several big brand media companies who, according to an AdAge article today, have told Google they deserve higher rankings in Google’s search results. Not only that, but one executive has also labeled the rest of the […]
Today, Google News will begin offering articles from several major wire services and news agencies hosted on its own site, rather than sending readers away from Google. The move is part of licensing agreements that have been stuck over the past year. Google News is also promising better duplicate story detection, so that the original […]
Google News To Newsmakers: Send Us Your Comments from me earlier covers the new system that Google unveiled today allowing for comments on news stories. I’ve now had a chance to talk briefly with Google News business product manager Josh Cohen about the system, to better understand its goals and potential future. Below, some answers […]