Google News and the current world situation

[salson]

Hello.

Does anybody know how Google is to cover the attack on Iraq? Are they to include any news section on the results (as on Sep 11th)?

[TheDave]

There is an entire news section on google which is contantly updated, so I would not think that they will. Sept. 11th was very sudden, this war isn't. Speaking of the news section, I visit there at least once an hour, it is the best source I have found for up to date information.

[rfgdxm1]

Definitely it will be all over Google news. The interesting thing will be to see if Google, an American company, slants things to be pro-US, or will do fair coverage? Considering Google targets an international audience, they may actually do fair reporting rather than just report the baloney out of the White House propaganda office.

[heini]

In this article from Fastcompany [fastcompany.com] is a nice rundown on the history of the Google news engine. It's stilla kind of beta, whith open future. No money coming out of it yet. With major events stirring people's need for solid info the G news could be put unto a final test: Does it hit critical mass?
I think some sort of grassroots campaigning would be needed to really lift it off the ground. Like when the whole blogging scene would start using and dropping it.

[martinibuster]

slants things

G doesn't slant things. It's completely automated. There was a recent article in Wired about a huge exodus of American readers to european web sites for objective reporting, and that G-News was one of the reasons.

Does it hit critical mass?

Interesting to see if Gulf War 2 does for Google news what the first one did for CNN.

[heini]

Yup. I'd be interested to know how many visits Google news gets compared to other major news sites. Sure, for folks as obsessive about Google in general as webmasters Google News is a given, but how many regular users even know about it?

[martinibuster]

Wired Article [wired.com] about Objective News, and how G-News may be one of the reasons a large American audience is going overseas for their news.

[GoogleGuy]

Yah, I like getting lots of different sources for news. It's much easier to get at the heart of an issue when you see what a lot of different people have to say about it.

[Small Website Guy]

Despite the PR10 of the news.google.com homepage, and the ease of reaching this page from the toolbar, I have not found it very useful. The news engine just seems to find the same story a zillion times.

Yahoo does a much better job of aggregating news sources, you can find some interesting stories on Yahoo you might not have otherwise found.

[Chicago]

Funny, just tonight I bookmarked news from China , Iran, Egypt, and France, just so I gain a broader perspective as events unfold.

I find myself wanting to use Google news and do at least once a day, but I am not fond of the format of the news (a lot of scrolling/poor use of space), as I am of MyYahoo where in I can choose different news outlets, order, and number of headlines. I have been a loyal MyYahoo user for some time. I will keep checkin in with Google...

[rfgdxm1]

>Sure, for folks as obsessive about Google in general as webmasters Google News is a given, but how many regular users even know about it?

From the link on the home page of the most popular search engine on the planet? ;)

[kittykat]

google news still not showing updated stories on start of war. delaying feed to help U.S.?

[kittykat]

i take it back, now there are stories

[rfgdxm1]

The US has started its campaign. We shall see how balanced Google news covers this.

[Marcia]

Finger-pointing is futile. How about let's stay stay on topic with objective issues being discussed:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[mahlon]

I just took a look and it is only showing 2 stories related to the target. I thought the page did not finish loading at first.

[rfgdxm1]

It looks to me that in its current incarnation Google News really isn't at the level of "up to the minute". While it isn't very old news, when you are dealing with a topic such as a war where news is happening fast and furious Google News will seem slow. IOW, Google News is great if late in the evening you want to find out what the major news of the day is, it isn't really well suited for finding out what the most recent targets bombed in a war are. IOW, Google news is closer to a newspaper with multiple editions published a day than it is a live TV newscast.

[TheDave]

Most definately I would agree that it's not up there with a live broadcast (will it ever be, though?), but it does pick up major incididents within about half an hour, which isn't bad.

[rfgdxm1]

Remember, Google News is just reflecting print journalism in the modern electronic form. On live TV they can literally show the bombs as they are hitting the targets. Print journalists observe what is happening, and talk to people. Then they have to sit down and type this into their laptop, which takes some time. They then have to be reviewed by an editor, which also adds a delay. They then have to be put on the website for Google to grab. Google's automated bots obviously aren't checking every minute. Then someone at Google has to decide which to put on the Google News page. Obviously this isn't live coverage.

[daroz]

Then someone at Google has to decide which to put on the Google News page.

It was my distinct impression that there was no human intervention other then the algo for determing content diaplyed on Google News.

I believe the bottom of the page says something to that effect.

[europeforvisitors]

It was my distinct impression that there was no human intervention other then the algo for determing content diaplyed on Google News.

That's the impression I had, too. It's hard to imagine a human editor being involved, because sometimes stories are duplicated or are accompanied by an incorrect photo. A human editor would have to be pretty amateurish to make such obvious gaffes.

[Brett_Tabke]

Since the algo is a human creation with dials and bells that can be adjusted at will, it's obviously a human editorial decision how the lists are ordered.

I trust a machine generated list, far less then a human generated list.

[GoogleGuy]

That's right--there are no human editors. The story leads are decided based on algorithms that measure a lot of different things, such as how many stories are showing up about certain topics and how quickly those stories appear.

Because it's all automatic, it can take a few minutes for breaking news to start making its way to the front page. Even though Google's news crawl is continuous--it is always running, 24 hours a day--we have to be able to see stories on the web before we can start to rank them as important. I was doing searches to track the latency, and the first "war has started" article (it was from South Africa, interestingly) appeared in our index within 3-4 minutes of when cnn.com posted the breaking news on their home page. It did take a little while after that for it to make it to the home page, but I think it was the top story within the hour of when the first actions began.

<added>And I think the variety of sources helps a lot. I've seen Arab News, Voice of America, and tons of other diverse views from all over the globe. I think that's a good thing. But again, let me emphasize that all the story selection is automatic.</added>

[Learning Curve]

Since they put the link to News on my toolbar, I've been checking GoogleNews often and I like it very much.

Right now, it's my favorite news source in part because of the fun of seeing which stories show up.

[martinibuster]

it is always running, 24 hours a day

Thanks for clearing that up for others. I already knew that, as I used to post news stories and was amazed that G new about it within minutes, i.e. started showing up in the serps (back in November).

I've had my suspicion that the newsbot was a hyper version of the fresh-bot, and somehow the design and function of them were similar.

[GoogleGuy]

It's a great way to practice freshness, martinibuster. :)

[vitaplease]

Now that Google has shown such an "interest" in blogs, it would be interesting to have a small link with every news subject towards "blogs" (if available).

Lets say news tends to be more factual, blogs more opinionated.
(I know some blogs are already included in news)
Probably it will be a new tab.

[yetanotheruser]

G doesn't slant things. It's completely automated.

Having got to the end of this thread I'm not sure that this is that relevant... but:

Does any one know the ratio (GG?) of western internet-newspapers to those from the rest of the world.. It just strikes me that however impartial the algo attempts to be, the western news machine has an inherent advantage for getting it's stories to the top because there are so many similar stories (I make no judgement about the right or wrong btw.. )

GG.. I'd be interested to know whether the algo promotes or demotes stories that are on the same topic but take a different slant.. I'd assume that you'd want as many converse views per topic?

<snip>

[edited by: ciml at 1:05 pm (utc) on Mar. 20, 2003]
[edit reason] No promotional messages please. [/edit]

[msgraph]

They then have to be put on the website for Google to grab. Google's automated bots obviously aren't checking every minute.

But they sure want to speed the process up some.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Helpmebe1]

nothing on the massive bombing that has launched approx 1045 EST today