Questions on Google News

How does it select the news source?

[vibgyor79]

I have a couple of questions regarding Google News.

1) How does the "Google News Bot" select the news source for the MAIN headlines? I mean, there are numerous news sources like Reuters, BBC, NY Times and so on. Why/How does it select Reuters over BBC for one news item and NY Times over CNN for another news item?

2) There has been talk about funding Google News through advertising. But unlike Yahoo News or CNN news, Google News has absolutely Zero content. That is, when I click on a news item, Google sends traffic away from its website to the news website. How does Google plan to use advertising here when it offers no content?

[Brett_Tabke]

Obviously it is a hand edited group of sites included (this aint the day pop 40 - lol). It is the most editorially active thing Googles ever done.

[iht.com...]

From the tech page:

ABC News, CBS Marketwatch, Business Week, CNN Europe, New York Times, Forbes

..and I turned off TV news for this?

>advertising.

It looks like build up work to acquire an audience. I think a year or two down the road, we'll see reuters and ap stories on Google.

[martinibuster]

Go to Google News. On the left hand side you'll see a link for "About Google News."

Click on this link. It will tell you all about it. It is a completely automated process for analyzing and choosing the news. It is not done by humans at all.

Google News is highly unusual in that it offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention. Google employs no editors, managing editors, or executive editors.

What Google won't tell you, however, is WHY it picks one over the other. That's their secret sauce. It's their bread and butter. It's what differentiates Google from Altavista. It's proprietary.

I encourage you to study the results. Do a search, study the results. The truth is in the results.

:)

[edited by: martinibuster at 6:20 am (utc) on Oct. 7, 2002]

[Brett_Tabke]

>If anybody knew the algo, the
>info would be worth a lot of money.

I don't think it would be worth anything at all. There are all kinds of news scripts out there. This isn't anything new or revolutionary - it's same ol. Aggregators like News Hub, MoreOver, RSS readers, NewsLinx, NewsNow.co.uk, or search engines like RocketInfo all do the same thing.

[martinibuster]

It's worth money to a magazine that is losing readership, and needs to prop up it's statistics to keep their ad salespeople busy.

And I can imagine that it's worth money to someone who can help that magazine raise their visibility.

Sorry if I sound catty sometimes, but I do try to edit it out.

Teach a man to fish and all that...

[vibgyor79]

It looks like build up work to acquire an audience. I think a year or two down the road, we'll see reuters and ap stories on Google.

Possible. But that would raise a few eyebrows at Yahoo.

Google News has a search feature too which searches all the news items. How is it? Relevant/Accurate? If Google News search proves to be popular, we may probably see an AdWords advertising program for Google News!