For a while, posts from the 63 blogs in this domain were being indexed by Google News, and this was directing a fair number of visitors to the site. Today, however, someone pointed out that Google hasn't done this since July 19.
Presumably their reasoning is that blogs are not geuine news sources, and that indexing them can only gum up the works. Also, Google does offer a specific blog-searching engine. Fair enough -- but in the interest of wholesale fairness this standard needs ot be applied consistently, and this isn't the case.
Right now, posts at Evolution News & Views (the Discovery Institute blog), Stop the ACLU, and WorldNet Daily are still showing up in Google News searches. I suspect this is because the word "blog" doesn't appear in the names of these sites, but blogs they are. The fact that these sites are operated by (in any order you like) wingnuts, imeciles, and half-literate liars is, I grudgingly concede, a value judgment and therefore irrelevant to the complaint, but it should upset you as much as it does us.
We at Science Blogs, while as happy to editorialize as anyone else, take pride in being accurate and directing readers toward genuine news sources, and even if we didn't it wouldn't be difficult to exceed the sloppy and dishonest standards of the aforementioned sites and others still making the cut. Keep in mind that WorldNet Daily routinely publishes lie-filled anti-gay stories by bottom-feeding cretins like Janet Folger and much, much more.
I encourage people who have found us through Google News searches or who simply agree with these sentiments to contact Google and ask them about this. You can do that here. This isn't about driving up the site's hit counts or any of that crap; it's about being able to at least match the output of online sewage from an extremely popular search tool with clean, if not immaculate, content.
Comments
Google, schmoogle. Why not instead spend your time addressing important issues of the day, such as: Would a reduction in the carbonation of popular beverages (soda, beer, wine) help alleviate global warming?
Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | July 31, 2007 6:30 PM
Too late, someone else already beat you to it. Resume your kvetching.
Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | July 31, 2007 6:35 PM
Thanks for pointing out another stupid-person blog, Tegumai. Ooh, just five minutes and the smug stupidity scalded my eyes.
Posted by: pough | July 31, 2007 6:45 PM
Interesting that Google has decided to stop indexing blogs as a sources of news items. They made such a big deal of including them in their searches not all that long ago.
There is an interesting article on this at http://www.blogherald.com/2007/04/23/is-google-droping-blogs-from-google-news/.
Posted by: Leigh | July 31, 2007 7:00 PM
But Deep Sea News has the word "News" in its title, therefore it MUST be authoritative!
As a blogger, mostly writing about and analyzing the current scientific literature on Invertebrate organisms, I took it upon myself to write Google News. I post my letter below to encourage other people to write their opinion on the matter. Feel free to use it as template.
Subject: What constitutes a blog?
Message:
Dear Google,
I has come to my attention that you recently took off scienceblogs.com and other weblogs with reputable content from the Google News index. Your argument was something along the lines that blogs do not constitute "genuine" news services. While I disagree with this because many of these blogs offer high quality news and views in several particular areas and directs readers to first-hand sources, you do offer a blog indexing search engine. This is fair enough I suppose.
The real question though is how you classify what a blog is. Do you classify something as being a blog if it has the word "blog" in its title? I ask this because while scienceblogs.com has been delisted in the Google News service, several other blogs are still indexed. The characteristics of a blog are:
1. A website where entries are written in chronological order (typically displayed reverse chronologically)
2. Provide commentary or news on a particular subject, or function as more personal online diaries
3. Combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic
4. Allows readers to leave comments in an interactive format
For instance, I just went to site and clicked on link from a site called "Ars Technica". While I won't comment on the content, my purpose is to illustrate that the "news" piece highlighted on your site is of the blog format as described above. The difference being Ars Technica calls itself a journal instead of a blog. I believe journals and blogs are synonymous.
Furthermore, several major news corporations have started blogs highlighting their own personal or corporate views on issues raised on their news programs. Newspapers have published opinionated editorials for decades. Are news corporations' blogs or newspapers' editorials deemed inappropriate for the Google News service because they are not genuine news?
Some blogs are offering significantly subpar content that would not be newsworthy in even the most flexible definition of journalism. These blogs don't appear to have the word blog on their site but still are blogs nonetheless. The fact that Google allows some sources that offer highly skewed content yet delist other blogs with high quality analysis of current news is inconsistent with your position. Please either remove all blogs, journals or whatever they may call themselves or filter blogs for those with highly reputable content (not to be confused with high traffic), such as the scienceblogs.com network. Another option is to include a button that users may select to include blogs in their Google News searches.
Posted by: Kevin Z | July 31, 2007 10:35 PM
By all means, ask Google to remove sites like the Discovery Institute's blog from their News index. However, I don't think that there's any kind of malicious intent here, but that we're seeing an intermediate result in a large change to Google News. That is: to move blogs, as much as possible, over to the blog search.
Unfortunately the line between blogs and news content is blurring these days: sites like Ars Technica (mentioned by Kevin Z) and Slashdot follow a blog-like format, but mix posts by many authors and try to control content to build "news" sites. Their success is rather mixed.
If I had to guess why ScienceBlogs was de-indexed, it would be that this site is a collection of blogs by individual people. That makes highly opinionated pieces or personal stuff much more likely, rather than creating a news/editorial focus. (I rather like that, but Google might not.) I think that Google is trying to limit their News index to sites which claim a larger base than individual bloggers, and that this is an ongoing process for them.
Posted by: Jimmy | August 1, 2007 2:00 AM
You might be able to find out if Google are seeing any problems with scienceblogs.com via their webmaster console (http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/) - but to get access to it, someone will have to go through some minor gymnastics in order to prove you own the domain.
Posted by: Zhasper | August 1, 2007 7:17 AM
"Also, Google does offer a specific blog-searching engine."
Yes they do:
http://blogsearch.google.com/
Posted by: Ginny | August 1, 2007 10:36 AM
Searching the names of a few prominent Democrats discloses that Google News is also still indexing NewsMax, Human Events and RushLimbaugh.com.
Posted by: Pieter B | August 1, 2007 1:06 PM