Google News: Updates on the Official News Aggregation Service & App

[GNews]

So, in case you all missed the news,

Google News stories will now be even more visible in search. Where 'Top Stories' was featured, now there are even more pictures to steal the attention away from those scrolling down towards search results.

Where is this Google News change going?

In my opinion, the way times are.. People are learning more and more the importance of living for today vs yesterday. There's a true power in those who understand this concept and I think it's part of our natural evolution for this to happen due to technology. Lack of attention. etc.

Now, we’re using the latest in machine learning to bring this approach to top stories in Google Search, making it easier for people to dive into the most useful, timely articles available.

Before you saw just a photo and a bunch of headlines. Now, you will see a carousel of news allowing scrolling left to right. Basically the attention of people can be snatched before they even go down to search results .

To power this new experience, we developed a new story-understanding technology to map the people, places and things involved in a news story, and then draw connections between them. This technology allows us to create distinct groups of news articles. To generate these groups, we use a variety of machine learning techniques including BERT models to examine the related articles and determine where one story ends and another begins. Our research has shown that clustering results into clearly-defined stories is critical in helping people easily navigate the results and identify the best content for their needs.

For the full google blog on this topic: click here


Another interesting take from this: Google News Network Not Only Sites to Be Published

Google News may no longer need to be applied for shortly . The new technology is supposed to be able to recognize quality news sites, their relevant headlines of the day, and automatically put them into search's "Top stories."

Personally, I do NOT buy this part. I've seen some shifts in results but nothing indicates this is sucessful yet.

I also noticed that site's news articles are now being published to the 'google news section' of search in order of their 'power' .. different than before. The ranking was a bit all over the place. There was a big shift in this, within the last 7 days I estimate.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I never use Google on mobile, but I've just opened my phone to try it.

I searched "keyword tool" and found:

1. What I assume is a single Adwords slot, but it's unmarked, which I'm sure the FTC is thrilled about.
2. A featured snipped from Wikipedia defining what a keyword tool is with an image carousel
3. "Videos from the web" carousel
4. "People also search for" carousel and listing of questions you can expand
5. 9 organic results
6. Another giant list of "related searches"

I had to scroll for four full screen widths before I ever saw an organic result.

The reason I did this was because the .gif in the OP didn't show any ads so I was curious if they were willing to push those down in order to cram new features at the top. I'm not even sure #1 was an ad, but it has to be. There's no way they're giving an organic slot the top spot and having zero ads.

I'd love to see a breakdown of their Adwords revenue on desktop versus mobile at this point.

All of this begs the question... When are we going to see these "enhanced SERPs" on desktop with horizontal scrolling features?

I discovered something recently... let me find it and put it in here:

 

[CHARTO911]

Always changing. Google toyed with a news style box for any site if it was a relevant search for that site i.e. Builder Society Buy Sell Thread Updates... It obviously didn't stick after their trial but I would love to figure out a way to get carousel access since I've gotten into Google news.

 

[GNews]

update of mine:

I've found Google now to be more effective in selling product
BUT these post may need to be more frequent now to maintain an easily viewed placement
It seems news is being cycled out of front page feature slots faster now
Pages still get ranked fastest however

 

[GNews]

Update:
The Google News is still being tampered with heavily.

What I've seen:
1) High DA/PA google news sites right now are SUPER EFFECTIVE.
2) Putting your brand in a cluster of news stories is still a big boost for serps temporarily. After the news goes flat ( ~3 months), your site will shuffle if it's not still frequently mentinoed within a popular topic.

3) Something big is on the way however. Google's very focused on improving news quality and the sites that make it through the fire will likely be more impacting on search results than ever. Why? Google's secretly talking with diff news outlet about paying them to create content they feature. This content will likely only be from people/groups who are respectable journalist who don't compromise the facts ( but lets be honest.. if they have to pay $$$ for this, somebody else will pay for the contrary. It's all for sale) .

news story: TheVerge.com report

4) Another big issue mentioned here. Googles tryilng to avoid Europe's law that's requiring tech companies to pay news companies for previewing clips of their articles.

 

[Samwise89]

Putting your brand in a cluster of news stories is still a big boost for serps temporarily.

I see this too, but with other types of "going viral," like getting a ton of Facebook shares, Twitter shares, or upvotes on Reddit. Google seems to know how to push anything that's "relevant in the moment" to the top and then let it drop back down over time. I see this on posts that don't have freshness involved, like a news article would.

What's nice is even though the post sinks back down in the SERPs it never falls all the way. There ends up being a new bottom that's higher up.

 

[GNews]

Not sure what's going on with how they are ranking Google News site but i just saw a shift of page rankings that's GREAT for some lower da/pa sites I used/offered before. It's almost as if a GN site hits a certain level of content being posted daily, BOOM, all the content gets revalued and upgraded.

Still trying to figure this out.

 

[GNews]

Oof, it now appears that since this update... Media companies are going after google.

To sum it up, since most people don't probably read much, the 'headline' of a story can be important. People simply browse and choose the headline from google instead of the headiness of particular media company sites, meaning Google can hoard all the traffic them-self.

It's fair game to me but, News media companies in France and Australia have gotten courts to rule in their favor; Google has to pay to feature news snippets on their site. It's essnetially them saying the headline , since there's an art to writing them, has value.

France's competition authority says that Google must go back to the bargaining table to negotiate a rate that the search giant will pay to link to articles on French news sites. So far, Google has flatly refused to pay fees to link to news articles, despite a new EU copyright directive designed to force Google to do so.

France was the first country to transpose the EU's order into national law. Google read the French law as allowing unlicensed use of the headline of a story, but not more than that. So in September, Google removed the "snippet" that often appears below headlines from its French news search results, as well as thumbnail images.

"We don't accept payment from anyone to be included in search results," Google wrote in a September blog post. "We sell ads, not search results, and every ad on Google is clearly marked. That's also why we don't pay publishers when people click on their links in a search result."

taken from: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...gle-must-pay-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic/

France’s competition watchdog ordered the U.S. tech giant to negotiate “in good faith” with French publishers and news services over the licensing fees it should pay for press content. The Autorité de la Concurrence said the talks should be wrapped up in three months, and insisted that they should result in a "remuneration" scheme for the publishers.

taken from: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/09/french-publishers-win-decisive-battle-against-google-177686


It will be interesting to see how Google tries to navigate out of this. They could just pull the sites of companies who want pay but then I think it would be a clear 'monopoly' issue.

 

[secretagentdad]

This is why France is a shithole.

Pay me if you link to my site. GTFO Only the most malignant petty bureaucrats and mafia use this logic.

Google should ignore these bureaucratic kleptocrats and file a restraint of trade complaint with the WTO and refuse to comply with any of their other smarmy nonsense to.

 

[GNews]

Interesting how important "Google News" is becoming to the world. While many are not aware of this growing 'dominance' and useful of being a part of this syndicated network, THE WORLD of media is.

Another step: Google just gave $2.3-million dollars collectively to a group of 18 news organizations in the Pacific Asia regions It's part of the big G's desire to support publishers globally and destabilize media powers that hold the iron hand today. AT least that's my perception. Divide and conquer.

The search giant said more than 250 organizations had applied for the funding. Those that are selected showed “variety and creativity of their ideas” to explore ways to increase reader engagement that would drive greater loyalty and willingness in readers to pay for content.


The $2.3 million innovation challenge fund is not evenly distributed among the 18 hand-picked organizations, a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. The company additionally also offers mentoring and training sessions to these organizations, the spokesperson added.

taken from: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/google-gives-2-3m-to-18-news-organizations-in-asia-pacific/

 

[GNews]

Australia now takling about trying to Boycott Google News & Facebook News
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...le-and-facebook-to-force-them-to-pay-for-news

A “collective boycott” of Google and Facebook may be an effective tool to force the digital giants to share advertising revenue with media companies, the competition watchdog has suggested.

surface glance: This would not be intelligent. They cannot retrain users to not use Google. Flip side, this means AMAZING opportunities could come about for smaller companies who decide to absorb traffic that's available with a sudden void.

 

[CCarter]

Australia now takling about trying to Boycott Google News & Facebook News

The fact they would even suggest this means they live in a fantasy world where THEY control how user's behave. All these dinosaur corporations are reacting to the new tech. For example when mobile usage started growing year over year Google had to react by start a mobile index and then eventually switching the mobile index to be the primary. You think Google wants the headache of having two separate indexes?

Removing a site from Google News won't magically make Google news less relevant, it will simple increase traffic to smaller sites that aren't a part of the boycott.

It's the same train of thought when SEOs come around stating "I can't wait till a new search engine beats Google". WTF. It has to be very significantly better for that to happen, and if it's significantly better do you as a failed SEO within Google think it's going to be 2007 SEO era? It's better than Google already... You ain't spamming that magical new search engine.

Backwards logic - happens when people live in a bubble/echo chamber. Always watch the behavior of the consumers if you want to keep up.

 

[GNews]

@CCarter ALso the fact that google's now givinig out millions of dollars to small agencies in countries where people work harder for less........... and these grants are in some sort of contract form which I'm sure protects google's interests. I've seen content offices pop up in certain countries.......... It's no joke.. I think Google already saw this coming and aligning themselves to beat up the bullies.

 

[GNews]

Google News gave away $5000 to different, small news media sites as a 'relief fund' curing the CoronaVirus epidemic.

This is great news for sites. I had 3 blog network owners who had to 'scrap' together money to deal with the epidemic. Reason being, staff could not come to the office, which i'm sure included some interns. Interesting to see that Google responded.

Google awarded this news relief fund to around 100 countries globally. There's millions involved overall in their giveaway. Still i question, what do these sites give up for this front end payout. Relief doesn't come free i'm sure.

In April, Google announced the initiative as a way to support small and medium-sized news organizations producing original journalism for local communities in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 12,000 applications from more than 100 eligible countries were submitted.

taken from: https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/arti...rlottesville-tomorrow-wins-google-news-grant/


What's also becoming clear. Google News is one of the most important parts of Google that people overlook and I'll leave it at that.

Entire countries are fighting over how the Google News feature works.

An interesting stat I cannot find yet... How many people are searching/reading on Google News daily. I found a Quora report that says 340-million were using it as of 2016. I can imagine today, the numer is doubled if not tripled.

 

[GNews]

Google News continues their goal of trying to take over news & media online.

These countries wanted Google to pay, so instead they are going to pay and contract offices to build their own media outlets . Overthrowing those elites trying to force paypal to share dividents.

- https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/07/t...aims-to-develop-and-train-news-entrepreneurs/

Summary:
Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers has teamed up with Google News to pilot an 8-week virtual course on the proper journalism methods. The guy who created Journalism Entrepreneurship Training Co., will head the event. His name is Philip Smith, a Stanford graduate.

“The curriculum is laser-focused on helping people understand and try to mitigate the risks ahead of time — by interviewing potential customers, potential sponsors, and advertisers and getting into the weeds of what their business is going to be after they launch,” Smith said. “[Often], people leaving a newsroom just go out there and they start reporting, set up a WordPress site, and six months later look back and think, ‘How the hell am I going to pay myself?’ I saw that pattern happen so often that I thought there’s got to be a better way to ensure that these people succeed.”

The point of the virtual bootcamp isn’t to launch a news startup in eight weeks, but to help journalists think as business owners and make their ideas less risky.

“Journalists are natural skeptics, except when it comes to their own idea about their business plan,” Smith said. “The challenge I ask participants to undertake is to apply that natural skepticism to their own assumptions. Let’s not risk our business on an untested assumption. Let’s test all of those assumptions that people are interested in what you’re going to report on and that they’d be willing to support you in some financial way.”

It's becoming evident, Google news will be a monster in the near future.

Google's got their hands in a lot of things.

This is another part to the overthrowing of old wealthy circles. New sharks that are feeding on old weaker sharks that didn't bleive in the ways of the web.

Also, Google's now paying publishers for their news content. A new licensing format.

details - https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/25/...blishers-pay-content-australia-germany-brazil

 

[GNews]

Facebook News was launched as a competitor to Google News.
What does this mean?

It means 2 of the biggest tech companies globally see a major value in these 'News' sections.

Facebook had to stop their project temporarily however as all the hate speech and information was too great:
https://www.financialexpress.com/op...lance-might-rightly-be-shifting-back/2010573/



Also, you can now get Users stats from the Google news tabs;
https://www.nichepublishers.com.au/publishers-can-now-analyse-search-traffic-from-google-news-tab/

The Google News data shows clicks, impressions and click-through rate for any links seen in the ‘News’ tab in Google Search results. To access this data in the report, click the ‘Search type: web’ filter on the top of the report, then select ‘News’.

And Google News aps got caught doing, the expected... which most others do. It's one of several apps called out for spying on user habits. But lets be real.... If you have an app and you think they aren't getting your information, you might as well let me see you this organic glutious maximus air. You're buying the same level of foolishness.

pps that started copying clipboard content once the app was open include: Google News, Patreon, Call of Duty, Fruit Ninja, and Philips Sonicare App.

 

[GNews]

Interesting. Google News has now added a new 'subtitle' link to go alone with the headline's site's write themselves. The goal is probably to avoid paying for headlines in the future as creating a real headline is an ART FORM that few understand. Many writers can't piece together a headline to match context of a desired internal link, etc................ without going into detail

But beyond that, they call this the 'subtitle for context'

If you're not already aware. This is one of the most important parts of internet content today. Facebook and Amazon are likely to try and compete in the future.


full story - https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/28/21345533/google-for-context-news-box-top-stories-links

image exmaple:

 

[secretagentdad]

Now this re-titling stuff is very interesting.

Any idea how they go about doing it? It a ML thing or a manual curation thing?

 

[GNews]

Now this re-titling stuff is very interesting.

Any idea how they go about doing it? It a ML thing or a manual curation thing?

Layman's explanation to accompany above:
This is a sub-headline for content related to the main article. It helps you follow the progress of a story.

And it's suspected, the 'for context' content has to be from the same site.

Not sure if there will be a feature for you to create this type of summary headline in the future but for now, i'm not sure.

other article:
https://9to5google.com/2020/07/28/google-search-for-context-top-stories/

From the looks of it, Google may be using this “For Context” section to link a second story from the same publication in all cases as one Twitter user noticed the same behavior on a link from CNET.

 

[GNews]

Well it's official. Australia has mandated that Google must pay for news:
https://globalnews.ca/news/7238439/australia-facebook-google-news-media-pay/


And it's clear, google's not going to budge much. I bet they will start investing in media companies in Australia privately and put them under contract . Google may pay but they will control the setup i'm sure.

If the U.S.-based platforms could not agree with the Australian media businesses on pricing after three months, arbitrators would be appointed to make a binding decision, the draft said.

The draft will be open to consultation until Aug. 28, with the legislation to be introduced to Parliament soon after, Frydenberg said.

As well as payment, the code covers issues including access to user data and transparency of algorithms used to rank and present media content.

 

[GNews]

Google News has a hand in local news in America now.

Here's a story about what was done in Michigan:
https://www.mediapost.com/publicati...ews-initiative-wraps-audience-lab-bridge.html

It appears Google is now training non-profit news rooms on how to master the art of building loyal readers.

“The Lab team worked with us to make our site and our newsletter more engaging. As tens of thousands of new loyalists return to us, a large portion are choosing to become paying members. Our revenue from these readers has kept pace with our significant audience spikes.”

- Bridge Michigan’s growth strategist Bill Emkow


Side news, google says the new Australian law/ layout for news payment is absurd . It puts both Search and YouTube at risk they say.

It appears Google's saying they need to let them oversee everything instead of handing over all their traffic to other big buinesses. Lol Ironic.

"You've always relied on Google Search and YouTube to show you what's most relevant and helpful to you. We could no longer guarantee that under this law."


Google Search and YouTube services would be "dramatically worse" and the new regulation "could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses", Ms Silva said.

story - https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53806489

 

[GNews]

Google news has a new 'weather alert' feature added:
https://9to5google.com/2020/08/13/google-news-weather-alert/

When active, “ALERT” appears in red text and with an accompanying exclamation icon in the top-right corner of Google News. Tapping slides up the same bottom sheet with a seven-day forecast. Below is a new card for the “extreme weather event.”

 

[GNews]

The fight of "Google News vs Australia" has hit front page of Google.com

Google has published an open letter about a newly proposed government regulation that would compel it to pay media outlets for news content. Australians visiting their local Google homepage are presented with an ominous pop-up which warns that “the way Aussies use Google is at risk” and “their search experience will be hurt by new regulation.” It’s a bold lobbying move that puts Google’s arguments against the change in front of millions of Australians.

Australia’s consumer watchdog pushed back, saying the letter “contains misinformation,” adding that “a healthy news media sector is essential to a well-functioning democracy.”

read - https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/17/...ing-for-news-lobbying-media-ads-search-market

 

[GNews]

Just got an interesting update.

ALLEGEDLY, all new sites added to Google News network after ~June 2020, will not be shown on the 'Google News' tab.

people chattering about it:
https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/thread/56290159?hl=en

Not sure if this is true. However, I was told this by someone who works to build GN sites.

If this is true, probably about to see a huge increase of value on Google News sites in 2021.

FACT:
All the Google News sites I've sold this year have increased in DA/PA/UR/DR . The average site saw a doubling in SERP value. This makes sense logically b/c you have to update sites a certain amount of times daily to remain on network. That's why it's great to get on the small sites early.

 

[GNews]

Google agrees to pay news publishers more than $1 billion
story:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/01/media/google-news-publishers-payments/index.html

What's going on?

Google' s trying to basically put an iron hand on the news publishing world and squash future lawsuits at the same time.. Google News is about to be in everyone's face more than ever in 2021, I would presume.

The licensing deals, previously announced in June, are part of a new product called News Showcase, where participating publishers can curate and decide for themselves how to present their content on the platform. The content is displayed as a "story panel," and publishers can employ timelines, bullets or related articles to tease the story and encourage viewers to click through to their site to read more. Google will pay some publishers to make paywalled articles free to access for non-subscribers.

Starting Thursday, Google users in Brazil and Germany can access the feature. At launch, News Showcase will only be available in the Google News app on Android. But it will soon come to the iOS app and later expand to the Google Discover app and Google search.

"It's clear that the newspaper industry has long faced economic challenges," Brad Bender, Google's vice president of product management for news, told CNN Business. "I think a number of us in the ecosystem want to step up and enable a better future for news. This is a very big investment, our biggest investment today, but it really does build on our 20 years of efforts with the industry."

Paying publishers to display their content has long been a source of tension between media companies and tech platforms. Facebook struck licensing deals with news outlets including The New York Times and Dow Jones last year when it launched Facebook News.