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Elevating original reporting in Search

blog.google

1–10 of 163 posts

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#2
Google made some pretty serious moves in the last year.

Their recent algorithm update is forcing news sites to improve their overall content quality

and by now highlighting original reports it will force news sites to write original content and not just rewrite each other articles.

It's cool to see how Google is changing online journalism

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#6
I found the rater guidelines document linked in this blog post quite insightful. Sections like how to assess the "E-A-T" rating (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) will be useful to me when writing content.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#7
post #3

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bad idea for a tech company with no experience or education in the field to have so much influence over what people perceive to be good journalism?

Isn't the original PageRank, and every iteration since, defined by what Google engineers believe to be a relevant and informative webpage? They have a 160+ page guide that tells their ratings team how to identify high-quality content:

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#8
post #3

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bad idea for a tech company with no experience or education in the field to have so much influence over what people perceive to be good journalism?

What would be the alternative? For lawyers to specify search algorithms?

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#9
post #6

I found the rater guidelines document linked in this blog post quite insightful. Sections like how to assess the "E-A-T" rating (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) will be useful to me when writing content. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...

I don't think anybody calling it "content" should ever be considered trustworthy. The word reeks of hastily rephrased Wikipedia solely intended for search engines.

Re: Elevating original reporting in Search

#10
post #4

I wonder how they are going to make this... Only based on timestamp? Based in "trusted sources"? Based in a new API?

Besides algorithms, they have a team of raters who manually evaluate the results. The rating guidelines are specifically enumerated in this guide: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...

For example, check out page 26 for their grid of "Examples of Highest Quality Pages"

Algorithmic and signal-wise, there are common conventions in English-language journalism that signal "original reporting", or rather, not original reporting. Such as, "...as reported by" or "...', Rep. Smith told the Washington Post". Of course, not every publication uses those, so I'm guessing the trustiness of a site/source will come into play.

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