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Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan points out how poorly Google handles those gaming Google News, using Google Trends as a starting point.

Do you find Google News to be too heavily polluted? Share your thoughts.

He found a blatant example when the term "chocomize" became listed as "volcanic" on Google Trends. When clicking for the results, he found several sites serving Google ads that presumably only created posts about the term because it was trending (as a way to get some easy traffic, and potentially ad clicks). In fact, some examples came from sites that were clearly aimed at entirely different niches, such as a horror movies site and a TV/Anime site. The biggest problem from the user’s perspective is that there was nothing immediately indicating why the term was trending.

The real reason the term was trending was apparently because CNN ran a story earlier in the day about a company called Chocomize that makes custom candy bars (a pretty cool concept, I have to say), but when looking at the Google News results, Sullivan had to really dig to find that story.

"The pollution within Google News is ridiculous," Sullivan says. "This is Google, where we’re supposed to have the gold standard of search quality. Instead, we get ‘news’ sites that have been admitted — after meeting specific editorial criteria — just jumping on the Google Trends bandwagon, outranking the actual article causing the term ‘chocomize’ to be popular, polluting the news results and along the way, earning Google some cash."

Earning Google some cash indeed. There is no doubt that this goes on all the time, specifically with AdSense sites. Interestingly, in a story grouped with Sullivan’s on TechMeme, the Wall Street Journal has some words from Eric Schmidt talking about Google’s famous "one trick pony". Schmidt is quoted as saying, "But if you’ve got a one-trick pony, you want the one we have. We’re in the ad business, and it’s growing rapidly. We picked the right trick." The piece goes on to talk about how that trick is going to pay off greatly in the mobile space as well, as more and more people gravitate to the Android operating system.

Schmidt has said in the past, as Sullivan reminds us, that the Internet is a cesspool (referring to an excess of useless content). So, to be fair, Schmidt doesn’t come across as being very enthusiastic about the sites that take advantage of Google Trends to game Google News. Still, there is money to be made, and if sites meet the criteria of what it takes to get into Google News, there’s a fine line Google has to walk, regardless.

Can it all be so simple?

Sullivan says, “It shouldn’t be that hard for Google to police what shows up in response to what it publishes on Google Trends. Spam sites ought to be nabbed. AdSense sites ought to be shut down. News publishers abusing the very lucky position they have of being in Google News, by routinely tapping into Google Trends topics that aren’t relevant to their publications, should get the boot.”

While I greatly respect Sullivan, and value his analysis and opinions, I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. We’ve all seen how the mainstream media sites turn to blogs to get their stories (sometimes without giving credit or links), just as the sites in question appear to have done with CNN. We spoke with Sullivan about this not too long ago after he became a victim of such a scenario.

It’s hard to say that just because you use Google ads, you should be penalized. That’s not to say there isn’t an issue, but while there may be plenty of “garbage sites” there are some pretty highly respected publications that serve ads by Google. The horror movie blog pointed to, does appear to generally offer horror movie related news (while crediting sources), based on a quick glance of its most recent content.  But if the Chocomize story on that blog doesn’t credit its source, that is a problem. Maybe this is a “garbage” site, maybe it’s not. From Google’s standpoint, determining that can’t be easy in all cases.

Looking beyond the credit issue for a moment, when it comes to topic-spam, who’s to say what a publication would find of interest to its audience? I’m not sure that I agree that a blog mainly focused on horror movies, for example, should not be able to blog about chocolate or another off-topic subject every now and then. That’s up to the publication and whether they want to risk alienating their own audience, if you ask me. Again, I’m not saying Sullivan is wrong about this particular site’s practices. I’m just looking at the bigger picture.

Maybe Google could do more to look at story sources, but that’s got to be a difficult task across all publications, and there would no doubt be plenty of room for debate between publications about who broke a story first.

I’m not saying this is what happened either, but hypothetically, what if the horror movies blog actually talked to the Chocomize people first and had the story first, and CNN just happened to find it and find it newsworthy themselves, and do their own piece. Now, that’s an unlikely scenario in this particular example, but it’s not outside of the realm of possibility in other examples, such as the one Sullivan experienced recently himself.

Regardless of that even, it’s hard to say "you can’t have content about this topic because we posted it as a trending topic."

There is clearly a problem with Google Trends. Sullivan is right in that the result doesn’t help explain why the topic was trending. He’s also right in that the original source (CNN) should be more visible. However, cleaning up the "pollution" might not be such an easy problem to conquer. It’s hard to say if Google is allowing such pollution to go on so it can make more money or if the problem is just too difficult for the search giant. It could be a combination of the two.

What do you think? Comment here.

At the end of June, Google made some big changes to the Google News home page. In fact, Google called these changes the biggest redesign of Google News since its beta launch in 2002.

Since this redesign, Google has been making some adjustments as people have shared their feelings about it. "Some of you told us that you really liked it, especially how the ‘News for you’ section lets you see a stream of articles tailored to the interests you specify," says Product Manager Chris Beckmann on the Google News blog. "The positive usage data we saw during our months-long tests of the redesign has continued since we introduced it to all users of the U.S. English edition, and hundreds of thousands of you have already customized your Google News homepages. But some of you wrote in to say you missed certain aspects of the previous design, such as the ability to see results grouped by section (U.S., Business, etc.) in two columns."

"At Google, we’re all about launching and iterating, so we’ve been making improvements to the design in response to your feedback," adds Beckmann. "For example, we’re now showing the entire cluster of articles for each story, rather than expanding the cluster when you hover your mouse over it. We’ve given you the ability to hide the weather forecast from your local news section. We made the option to switch between List view and Section view more obvious."

Google has also now added an option in "News for You" for a Two-column view, which shows three top stories from each section:

While the new version of Google News is available in English in the U.S., the company said upon launch that it would be extended over the next few months.

Google has made some changes to the Google News homepage.

"There’s an old saying that all news is local," says Google’s Kevin Stolt. "But all news is personal too—we connect with it in different ways depending on our interests, where we live, what we do and a lot of other factors. Today we’re revamping the Google News homepage with several changes designed to make the news that you see more relevant to you."

This video pretty much sums it up:

More info here.

The new version of the page is rolling today in English in the U.S. This will be extended over the next few months. Google will also make the ability to choose which sources you see more or less often available in all English-language versions of the site.

There is a rumor that has been floating around the web for a few days (apparently starting at Italian newspaper La Repubblica) that Google is working on something called Newspass, which would let users pay for news content across multiple publications that charge for content – another way for publishers to get paid and still utilize Google (Google already has a few ways).

According to the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog, Google has not denied that such a product is in the works, but gave the classic "we have nothing specific to announce at this time" response.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. recently offered $11.5 billion to acquire the rest of British Sky Broadcasting that it doesn’t already own leaving some to wonder just what the company is up to. "Analysts are wondering, for instance, whether Sky’s direct relationship with customers could be used as a way to market other News Corp. products and services," says the NYT’s Eric Pfanner.

Over 300 newspapers have joined forces with Ranger Data Technologies to launch a new online auction site (geared mainly at local auctions) that would compete with eBay. The goal for the newspapers is supplemental revenue. The site is called Boocoo, and it’s currently in beta.

A lot of people have considered the iPad to be a godsend for newspapers, but it turns out the newspaper apps available are getting a great deal of criticism for being too limited. Poynter has an interesting article looking at why the NYT designed its app in a limited fashion.

Update: Google has now released video of Schmidt’s speech. Watch it and hear what Schmidt has to say right from him.

Original Article: Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a pep talk to the news industry Sunday Night in Washington, addressing the American Society of News Editors. Schmidt’s talk comes after Rupert Murdoch recently re-ignited the "we’re going to block Google" flame.

Is the web good for the news industry? Tell us what you think.

"The web can ultimately be very good for news," Schmidt is quoted as saying. "Think about it: You have more readers than ever, you have more sources than ever, for sure you have more ways to report and new forms of money. New forms of making money will develop."

According to Politico, Schmidt talked about "wanting to be challenged through technology that directs readers to a story with an opposing view." News aggregators do this (assuming that they’re aggregating a rounded pool of sources. Google News does this. Go to a story page in Google News, and you’ll be met with articles (sometimes hundreds or thousands) from varying sources, many of which have varying views.

That can be valuable to a reader, and can paint a more rounded picture of the story. Perhaps Google will deliver something (technology-wise) through Google News that puts greater emphasis on the opposition of views from the sources it draws from. Could this really be done algorithmically? What if Google News had a credibility rating system like Allvoices?

Google is "working on new ways to tailor advertisements and content for consumers, based on what stories they read," according to Politico’s account of the speech.

Either way Schmidt reportedly says that new forms of making money will develop and that Google is working on them, without giving any more detail than that. He did however advise news publications to place greater emphasis on news personalization and mobile, and maintained that there’s a bright future for both display ads and subscription models.

What approach would you like to see Google take for delivering news content? Ads? Share your thoughts here.

Getting press coverage can mean a great deal for gaining traffic and overall exposure for your business. That said, there are also ways to take some initiative yourself in getting some exposure from news search.

Is news search part of your strategy? Real-time? Social Search? Press releases? Discuss here.

News Search Optimization

As Lisa Buyer of the Buyer Group talked about with WebProNews at SES last week, news search optimization is getting more powerful with social media and real-time search. Add these to older tactics like blogs and press releases, and there have never been more opportunities to get news-related content discovered.

Press Releases

Press releases can still be a great way to spread the word about any announcements your business might have. They can also drive traffic, particularly from search engines.

Back in the summer, PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," the CEO of the company behind the case study had said.  "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we’ve seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

Remember, Google News indexes press releases as well.

Real-Time Search

You’re probably already using social media in some capacity at this point. Real-time search presents an added benefit to talking about timely topics using channels that you are already using (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, etc.). That doesn’t mean spam. Spamming won’t get you very far here anyway, because Google is pretty good at filtering this. We went over a few basic tips for real-time search optimization a while back. The recap is below, but you can find them elaborated on here.

1. Use keywords
2. Talk about timely events
3. Have a lot of followers (who can share your content)
4. Promote Conversation
5. Include Calls to Engagement

Real-time search is much more than just Google. There are an increasing number of players in this space, and with the rise in smartphone usage, mobile apps are giving consumers a lot of choices in how to obtain their information.

Social Search

Another great benefit of using social media means you get to show up in your friends/followers personalized social search results for numerous queries on Google. Newsy topics are frequently the ones that trend, and that means lots of people searching. If something big happens, there’s a chance that some of your social network contacts will search for something related to that, and if you have something to say about it, there’s a good chance they’ll see it in their results.

Of course people search with the social networks themselves as well. Facebook search queries were on the rise last time I checked.

Google News

Last September, we ran down a number of Google News SEO tips here. Google shared some tips of their own on the subject as well:

Optimizing for news search means more shots at showing up in search results period. Do you have other ideas about getting in front of news seekers? Share here.

After a seven-week-long hiatus, Google is now hosting content from the Associated Press again. The two have had a deal in place in the past, but AP content quietly went missing from Google, and that very fact became a topic of wide discussion last week. Now the deal appears to be renewed to some uncertain extent.

The statement Google has given on the matter says, "We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. The licensing agreement is the subject of ongoing discussion so we won’t be commenting further at this time."

An AP spokesman is quoted as saying, "We have nothing to add to Google’s statement."

If you’ve followed the online news industry much, we probably don’t have to tell you that Google and the AP have had a somewhat complicated, if not rocky relationship.

Last week, Yahoo reached its own deal with the AP. Financial terms of that agreement were not disclosed.

This week, the AP promoted editor and correspondent Ted Anthony to Assistant Managing Editor. He is said to have been involved in the development of the news organization’s social media practices.

Related Articles:

> Mark Cuban Takes Murdoch-esque Stance on Google

> News Corp. Blocks Content from News Aggregation Site

> Do You Have the "Right" to Link?

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Murdoch’s War with the Aggregators

> Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?