Category Archives: Search

#WANIndia2009: Audio – Google’s David Drummond on working with publishers

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There was a more peaceful air on stage at yesterday’s closing debate of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, entitled What do we do about Google?

David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal counsel of Google, suggested the search giant hadn’t done enough to ‘engage with newspapers’.

According to WAN-IFRA president Gavin O’Reilly, Google is missing the point: this is an issue of copyright (‘a deceptively simple legal principle’) and a lack of control options for publishers when it comes to search engines and aggregators indexing there content.

Vested interest on both sides, here’s the full audio of Drummond’s speech:

And O’Reilly’s thoughts:

WAN-IFRA president Gavin O’Reilly on Google and newspapers

What did the crowd want? Calls for evidence, from both parties, of what conversations are going on between newspaper groups, representative bodies and Google; and progress, so the debate might be different next year…

Google introduces option for five-a-day free click limit

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Google is to allow publishers to limit free access to content found via Google News, it announced in a blog post yesterday.

Publishers using restricted access systems will be able to prevent Google News users looking at more than five pages of content a day without registration or subscription.

In the post, Google said:

“We’re happy to see that a number of publishers are already using First Click Free [a system allowing very first article view by a Google News user] we’ve found that some who might try it are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content.

“As most users are generally happy to be able to access just a few pages from these premium content providers, we’ve decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day.

“This change applies to both Google News publishers as well as websites indexed in Google’s Web Search. We hope that this encourages even more publishers to open up more content to users around the world!”

Channel 4 News: @robertandrews and @ciaranj debate News International, Bing and Google

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Further to yesterday’s news from the Financial Times that Microsoft is considering paying for news content to appear on its search engine Bing (in a ‘web pact’ with News International), Channel 4 News last night debated the potential impact this could have on the market.

Krishnan Guru-Murphy discussed with paidContent:UK editor, Robert Andrews, and head of social media at global media agency Mindshare, Ciarán Norris.

FT.com: ‘Web pact’ for Microsoft and News Corp?

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The companies have declined to comment, but the FT reports that Microsoft – which owns search engine Bing – has entered discussions with News Corp ‘over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to ‘de-index’ its news websites from Google’.

It reports:

“The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

“However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.”

Full story at this link…

Almighty Link: What would it look like if news organisations blocked Google?

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A timely post from the Almighty Link blog, following comments from both Rupert Murdoch and Google’s UK director Matt Brittin about removing news sites from Google’s indexing.

Does Google need news content? Kevin Sablan has some screenshots illustrating how the search engine relies on news items for its best results.

Full post at this link…

#soe09: Google doesn’t need newspapers – but do newspapers need it?

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Google doesn’t need newspapers – it’s official; but its users do, Matt Brittin, UK director of Google, told the Society of Editors conference today.

Some key points from Brittin:

  • “Taking content out of Google news is a political statement (…) but experimentation is good.”
  • “One of the reasons we’re working with a lot of publishers is because we passionately believe that the internet needs to have quality content on it.”
  • “Does Google need news content to survive in this year? No (…) Economically it’s not a big part of how we generate revenue, but the value of the internet to consumers is all about finding great content online.”
  • “We’re a technology company and we’ll try and contribute technology that helps [e.g. Fast Flip, micropayment system] (…) We’re absolutely not [a newspaper company].”

The audio below features Times editor James Harding (first), Evening Standard editor Geordie Greig, and The National editorial director Martin Newland with their opinions on removing content from Google News:

Mumbrella: Murdoch to remove sites from Google’s index?

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Following his comments last month in which he described aggregators as ‘kleptomaniacs’ and ‘plagiarists’, Rupert Murdoch has suggested News Corp could remove its sites from Google’s index.

Speaking in an interview with Australia’s Sky News (video below): “I think we will [remove our content from Google’s index]. But that’s when we start charging.”

As Mumbrella explains: “Using the robots.txt protocol on a site indicates to automated web spiders such as Google’s not to index that particular page or to serve up links to it in users’ search results.”

In the interview, Murdoch also discusses what could be put behind potential news site pay walls.

Full post at this link…

ReadWriteWeb: Google allows readers to customise news

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Google has created a new way for its users to save customised news searches and publish/share these results with others in their own ‘sections’.

“Custom sections directory, which gives users of some of our English-language editions the expanded ability to create comprehensive sections to put on their Google News homepage or share with other users,” says the announcement on the Google News blog.

Users will therefore be able to create their own news sections outside of those already offered by Google News.

As ReadWriteWeb explains:

“Part dashboard, part feed reader, and all user-friendly, this service promises to be both popular and useful. Users can create sections based on keywords and then publish their sections to directories for sharing with others.

“Multiple sections can be added to a user’s Google News homepage, creating a customized, keyword-based digest. this feature is turning Google News into the infinitely segmented, infinitely remixable modern newspaper; and with all the sources Google indexes, it’s just what users need. Unfortunately, it also deals yet another blow to suffering old media publications, many of whom aren’t too happy about the distribution of their content in the first place.”

via Google Enters Customizable News Dashboard Market.

OJR: ‘Does your site really need to be in Google News?’

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Just how important is it to get your site into Google News? Robert Niles raises the question on the Knight Digital Media Center’s Online Journalism Review.

“For many online publishers, affiliated with newspapers or not, the Holy Grail of traffic is inclusion in the Google News index.

(…)

“But is inclusion in that index or other search engines’ news indices really worthwhile for the majority of online news publishers? I’m going to argue… no. (Well, at least it’s not worth making a fuss over.)”

Full post at this link…