Google wants to give more prominence to original news stories, but details are sparse.
Google has altered its news ranking scheme to give priority over follow up stories to its first report on significant problems.
The Company claims it has changed its scheme of secret news “to highlight items that we identify as important initial reports worldwide.”
Google also updated its rules for the 10,000 employees it uses to rate the quality of its search outcomes alongside these modifications. These raters now need to consider extra considerations, such as whether a journal has received a prestigious journalism prize.
Google is instructing its raters to “prestigious prizes such as the Pulitzer Prize or the history of high-quality initial reporting,”
This fresh award sign could irritate thousands of fresh media editors who are usually not recognized by established media brands, like significant newspapers and news agencies. However, it could also reward publishers who published a scoop and earlier lost traffic on stories subsumed by hundreds of follow-up papers.
Richard Gingras, Google’s media vice president, claims that modifications to his rater rules will help keep initial reports more prominent for a longer time.
“We can then discover the tale that all began with readers interested in the recent news, and publishers can profit from being able to see more extensively their initial reporting,” Gingras wrote.
But Google has not defined how these modifications are going to lead more search traffic to original stories. For instance, whether original stories would remain at the top of search outcomes in the top stories section for longer.
Gingras informed the New York Times that the changes were aimed at engaging Google’s customers. “We do everything here with Google Search and Google News to continue gaining and maintaining the confidence of our customers,” he said.
The shift also arises when 50 US state lawyers conduct an antitrust inquiry into the advertising company.
At present, most publishers will just have to wait and watch how Google’s modifications affect them, because Google does not have a clear definition of the initial report for the rankings of the search.
This is understandable because even initial narratives often build on other previous reports, while other reports can provide backgrounds and contexts not included in the breaking tale.
“There is no absolute definition of original reporting, nor is there an absolute standard for establishing how original a given article is. It can mean different things to different newsrooms and publishers at different times, so our efforts will constantly evolve as we work to understand the life cycle of a story,” wrote Gingras.
The guidelines for raters are meant to complement its automated ranking system by providing a “clear description of what we value in content when ranking”, he said.
“There is no absolute definition of original reporting, nor is there an absolute standard for establishing how original a given article is. It can mean different things to different newsrooms and publishers at different times, so our efforts will constantly evolve as we work to understand the life cycle of a story,” wrote Gingras.
The guidelines for raters are meant to complement its automated ranking system by providing a “clear description of what we value in content when ranking”, he said.
