Is Google Droping Blogs From Google News?

April 23, 2007 | By Darnell Clayton | Filed Under General, Google, Search

With the line between blogs and mainstream media (or MSM for short) getting blurrier by the day, it was not a surprise a few years ago to see highly trafficked blogs being cited at news sources on Google News.

Although many hailed this as another victory for bloggers, others argued that including opinionated voices would generally hurt Google News with people presenting their viewpoint as if it were the only acceptable reality.

Now it seems that the search engine king has removed many of these blogs from its listings as news sources, which may not make too many people happy.

Not too long ago, sites like Jihad Watch, Muslim Wakeup, Iraq The Model, Democratic Underground, Polipundit, etc. were all regularly cited and “grouped” as news sources next to CNN, Fox News, NBC, etc.

Even relatively young sites such as Hot Air (which is barely a year old) were included as Google News sources.

Now it seems that a quick search on Google News for any of these blogs brings up nothing at all.

Perhaps the search engine king is attempting to “restore value” within Google News by only including websites that are consistently producing original content, as opposed to most blogs which generally analyze content.

Although some weblogs (like Powerline Blog) are still indexed, Google may be in the process of moving highly opinionated sites off the general news shelf and into their blog search engine.

While some may decry this maneuver, this may bring about some “fresh air” to Google News as it was quickly turning into a “shouting ground” full of emotional opinions, instead of general reports of what is happening around the world.

Although blogs have proven themselves to the media and the world as credible sources (as one only has to look at Engadget to verify this) it may be to everyone’s benefit of separating the two, at least online.

Note: In a weird twist of fate, even The Blog Herald seems to have been filtered out from Google’s ranks. Ironic, isn’t it?


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Comments

10 Responses to “Is Google Droping Blogs From Google News?”

  1. cactos on April 23rd, 2007 4:43 pm

    Maybe Google do this to enhance his blogsearch?

  2. jhay on April 23rd, 2007 5:50 pm

    I’m sure Google was testing something when they did all this. They probably have something cooking in the servers.

  3. darrenh on April 23rd, 2007 9:32 pm

    Seems to make sense to me. Blogs on blogsearch. News on news sites.

  4. Matt Craven on April 24th, 2007 12:05 am

    You guys stopped covering the news here a long time ago

    ~Matt

  5. Angela on April 24th, 2007 6:33 am

    Doesn’t matter what google does. Bloggers will always have the upper hand. Had it not been for a blogger the news media wouldn’t be verifying and rechecking it’s information production. Bloggers keep the news grounded. It’s not supposed to be about ratings. Same thing goes for the web. It’s for the love of blogging.

  6. The Link Nazi on April 24th, 2007 2:24 pm

    Will will over ourselves. No need for Google. The revolution has begun

  7. James Governor’s Monkchips » links for 2007-04-24 on April 24th, 2007 6:27 pm

    [...] Is Google Droping Blogs From Google News? at The Blog Herald It also seems like Google is downgrading bloggers as authorities in PageRank. i am losing my juice. still on the front page of google.com search for James, but now number ten. “Stephen” dropped on to page 2 (tags: bloggers Google) [...]

  8. Andy Merrett on April 25th, 2007 9:03 am

    Couldn’t help yourself, could you Matt?

  9. Bloggar inga nyhetskällor hos Google News « PR 2.0 on April 25th, 2007 5:37 pm

    [...] Läs “Is Google Droping Blogs From Google News?” av Carnell Clayton. [...]

  10. Google News Courting The Best Of The Blogosphere? : The Blog Herald on October 3rd, 2007 2:52 am

    [...] seems that after a brief suspension, Google is once again including bloggers as sources after previously removing them from Google [...]

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