No news is News

[Hissingsid]

In my niche for the most important two word term Google has started to put a so called "news results for two words" at the top of serps. The page linked to isn't news and its not from a proper news site. It is a poorly written press release that points out the obvious on behalf of one company to promote itself.

It seems to me that this is wide open to abuse and now the news result appears at number one there's going to be a clamour to produce the best ranking non news masquerading as real news.

Is news going to become the new spam target?

Will Google lose credibility if it continues to promote lame PR?

Cheers

Sid

[tedster]

Rhetorical questions, I assume. Clearly the answer is yes, promoting "lame PR" as if it were news would create a problem. I'd suggest using the feedback link at the bottom of every SERP: "Dissatisfied? Help us improve"

Also, just to clarify, you are talking about a regular search results page with a "News" result integrated through the univeral search functionality, right?

[Hissingsid]

Also, just to clarify, you are talking about a regular search results page with a "News" result integrated through the univeral search functionality, right?

Hi Tedster,

Yes exactly as you say, standard web search #1 result lame PR.

The so called news story is in the form: Weather predictions say we are going to have a rainy spring, "Brand Name" umbrella manufacturers urge people to carry an umbrella.

I've used rain and umbrella as a daft example.

To continue with the analogy the site carrying the article is an umbrella comparison site and at the bottom of the article is a link to another umbrella manufacturers site with an affiliate code in it. If this was Adwords you would call it arbitrage.

I was expecting that other folks might be having the same problem and what their views are on it, hence the rhetorical questions.

I will do as you suggest and report it as poor quality but if this is the tip of the ice berg Google needs to pay more attention to which sites carry real news and which carry lame PR for arbitrage purposes.

Cheers

Sid

[Hissingsid]

Hi Ted,

I reported it to Google, within an hour it dropped to #4, today it has gone into oblivion.

I'm not quite daft enough to think that there is a link between reporting the issue and the result but I am daft enough to over react to Google testing new unhelpful things ;)

Cheers

Sid

[internetheaven]

I reported it to Google, within an hour it dropped to #4, today it has gone into oblivion.

That wasn't the report, that's just what happens to news articles. One of my sites is a news site in Google news and we sometimes see irregular traffic from terms in our articles when they hit the No.1/No.4 spots.

Google really does need to clean up some of the PR re-circulating news sites. It's always seemed a little fishy to me that actual PR services cannot be listed in Google News yet the 100+ mirrors of each PR newswire (with Adsense ads splashed all over them) clog up the results/feeds/alerts.

[Hissingsid]

So my best strategy next time one of these things goes to #1 for my most important term is to stick my head in the sand and wait for it to go away ;)

Cheers

Sid