Kos Pulls Out Of Google News
Daily Kos founder Markos Zuniga says “Google News is becoming unusable”, and has asked that Kos be removed as a source.
A “news” operation needs to present news, and credible news at that. That means get rid of the blogs (mostly opinion), get rid of the no-name sites, the conspiracy sites, and the rest of that crap.
I have no idea about the quality of Google News, if only because it was surpassed long ago by RSS readers, memetrackers, and proper personalized sites like Findory. However, I have noticed a lot of stories about bad sources making it into News in the last half-year, which would indicate that there have been some weakening of Google’s inclusion criteria.
From Elinor Mills:
The criteria for evaluating sources for Google News includes: regular updates to the posted content; the source is an organization and not an individual; the content does not include hate speech or pornography; and the source conducts editorial reviews of the content, [Google spokeswoman Sonya] Boralv said. In addition, the source’s Web site needs to be “technically conducive to inclusion,” she said.
Why doesn’t Google take advantage of all the data being indexed by Google Blogsearch to determine which sources are credible? After all, at the higher levels, the top-linked sources are almost always legitimate (the British media notwithstanding).
So he’s complaining that there are too many blogs in Google News so he’s going to punish Google by withdrawing his blog?
That makes sense. Way to take action Kos!
Comment by JoeBrooks | October 18, 2006
[…] » Kos Pulls Out Of Google News » InsideGoogle » part of the Blog News Channel A “news” operation needs to present news, and credible news at that. That means get rid of the blogs (mostly opinion), get rid of the no-name sites, the conspiracy sites, and the rest of that crap. (tags: google googlenews editorial dailykos) […]
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He also suggests using Google’s own measurement of credibility, “the top-linked sources are almost always legitimate.” Links are a Google medium of exchange. The connection between links, site traffic, etc. and authority/credibility is indirect and tenuous at best.
Comment by joel | October 18, 2006
Joe: Maybe he’s making a good point, saying he would rather improve Google News than take the free traffic as the service deteriorates.
Joel: Google’s use of links accross the web is an imperfect system, but Technorati’s top-linked blogs are a near perfect list of popular and legitimate blogs. Name one spam or poorly written blog in their Top 100.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | October 18, 2006