Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Google News Meta Tags Program Killing Blog Listings

The so-called Google News Meta Tags original content tagging experiment has resulted in a massive delisting of blogs on a scale such that it could be called The Blog Saturday Night Massacre. Especially since it happened on Saturday November 20th as well as that weekend.

A review of posts in a subject area called "Indexed stories for past 2 days missing" at Google News Help Forum reveals a common complaint that blogs were taken off Google News without email warning or reason, including Zennie62.com. Some blog webmasters waited for contact from someone at Google, and are still waiting.

This is what I posted at the Google News Help Forum:


Our blog, too, had the same problem. Indexing to Google News stopped on November 19, 2010, and it seemed to be timed with my blog post on Sarah Palin. I contacted Google News support, but no response. But then, a friend provided me with both the email and phone number of Krishna Bharat, the Google News Creator. I emailed, then called him while I O'Hare Airport. He seemed rushed, but said he's have support look into it.

The next day, I got a weird email that read the blog Zennie62 wasn't approved for inclusion into Google News. After investigation, I figured someone pointed at the fact that I blog at SFGate.com, the website of The San Francisco Chronicle, too. But all of my posts start at Zennie62.com, and Google staff knew that. All of the blogging styles and approaches I use at Zennie62, I use at SFGate.com. Period. Plus, we have anywhere between 3 and 10 active bloggers every day at Zennie62, not just me.

When I petitioned to have Zennie62.com included on Google News, my main point was that my blog posts at SFGate.com were EXACTLY the same as on Zennie62.com, yet Google News favored SFGate.com. The Google Staff I contacted agreed, and made the case for Zennie62.com. In August, we were in. Now, not.

Then, this whole meta tag plan was established, and Google News, it seems, has made a mistake.

The meta tag plan is a good idea in theory, but a big mess in practice. Also, I noticed a lot of Conservative Blogs popped up on Google News - Red State, Newsbuster, and others - that were not there. It makes Google News look like it's favoring Conservative Blogs because liberal blogs like VF Daily are not on Google News.

But the even larger problem is bloggers do not "team up" to coordinate on Google-related issues. It seems like we act as free agents and point fingers at each other, while being harmed by Google in the process.


This blogger emailed Google News Creator and Principal Scientist Krishna Bharat, who once claimed that he wanted Google News to be a "Force For Democracy," as well as other Google staffers for an answer, and received this weird response:


Thank you for your note.

Although we're unable to provide specific suggestions at this time, we
sincerely appreciate your interest in Google News and your willingness to
provide your articles to us. As we mentioned in our previous email, we'll
log your site for future consideration.

Thanks for your interest in Google News.

Regards,
The Google News Team


The email response to that was essentially that Google News and Google have no idea how many blogs they've impacted, or for that matter lives. Blogs are a source of jobs and income for many people today. For Krishna and Google to take the action they did was at best irresponsible; at worst, I'm not sure what to call it at this point. The whole episode's still unfolding.

A Blogger Calls

About an hour later, I wound up in an interesting but brief phone conversation with a husband and wife blogger team who's blog, which I will not mention here, was severely impacted by the Google News de-listing. (The good news for Zennie62.com is my obsessive tinkering with the blog template has resulted in a website that's so-overengineered, the delisting impact is no where near as great as I feared it would be. The search engine placement is still extremely good, great, even. But that's not the case for others. I digress.)

They had to stop paying bloggers from their site, and reported of how other blogs, some on Google News for three years, were delisted and are suffering from decreased traffic and out-of-work bloggers. Overall, not a fun Thanksgiving Eve for bloggers.

As I warned Google and Krishna, they started a unified blog network that could really come back and bit them in the ass.  That's putting it mildly.

I understand, but disagree, with Google's desire to protect Old Media sites.  Indeed, Associated Content, the giant web platform now owned by Yahoo, was only partially impacted by the Google News Meta Tag Program.  I'm told Yahoo was allowed to "cherry pick" listings that appear as duplicate content on Google News and Yahoo News.   My source says "it's not fair for the little guy,"  or gal for that matter.

Between the Google News Meta Tags Program action, Google's Blogger.com's elimination of six popular music blogs because Google overreacted to a DMCA complaint, and Google's deal with Verizon that threatens Net Neutrality, 2010 is turning out to be the year Google turns its back on small business bloggers, then, in the case of music bloggers, shoots them as it walks away.    That's not too dramatic a statement.

But, if John Kenneth Galbraith's Theory of Countervailing Power, outlined in his classic book American Capitalism, is correct, then the large number of bloggers could unite as one to, in some way, force Google and Google News to stop the harmful tactics of present day.  Indeed, Google has laid the platform for Galbraith's theory to take hold.

Stay tuned.

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