News publishers looking to climb through the ranks of Google News listings will find it difficult if they pursue the same strategies that they would for standard Google search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
The inner workings of the way in which Google ranks news stories is relatively opaque, especially when compared to the transparency with which the company treats its primary search engine, according to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. Factors like content originality and aggregate editorial interest can change the impact of search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns based on Google News.
Sullivan says that Google News also uses the number of clicks that a given story draws as a factor in determining page rank. This can, in rare cases, be subject to abuse by unscrupulous news outlets, but Sullivan quotes Google sources as saying that the frequency of such behavior is much lower in news than in general web search engine optimization (SEO).
Content providers have a love-hate relationship with Google News, which can be a huge traffic driver to websites but has also drawn criticism from such media moguls as Rupert Murdoch, who has publicly considered pulling all of his News Corporation’s content from the listings.
