Published in News

More foul play by Google’s algorithm

by on13 August 2013

How is single sentence news “information”

Google’s algorithm, which is supposed to be helping protect users from bad news sites, is actually linking people to single sentence paywalls. The algorithm has been killing off smaller news sites on the pretence that they do not provide news that its readers want. It is supposed to assess stories and news based on size, links and quality.

However it seems that same standard does not apply to news sites of established traditional newspapers which are sitting behind paywalls. 

News sites, such as Barrons, with paywalls, often produce cut down versions of their news stories. Some of these are a sentence long. However Google loyally lists these, along with any site that links to them. It also includes these single sentence stories in its lists of alerts.

Since a lot of these sites are American, where the idea of putting the news in the first sentence is foreign, the user is clueless about the news is about.

Meanwhile independent news sites find that their versions of the same stories are black-listed from Google News completely. All this seems to us is that Google is advertising the big news sites pay for news model over smaller sites which depend on advertising. Ironically Google is cutting its own nose off to spite its face, many of these smaller sites depend on Google AdSense for their revenue.

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