Tag Archives: Google blog

Google News US launches ‘standout’ tag so news sites can highlight top content

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Google News unveiled a new feature during a session at the Online News Association Conference in Boston at the weekend which will allow publishers to highlight their top content and give “even more credit where credit is due”, according to the Google blog.

At present the so-called “standout content” tag is only available on the US edition of Google News and it is not clear from the Google blog when it plans to roll out the new feature in the UK.

The Google blog explains how news sites can flag up top content:

If you put the tag in the HTML header of one of your articles, Google News may show the article with a ‘featured’ label on the Google News homepage and News search results. The syntax for this new tag is as follows:

 <link rel=”standout” href=“http://www.example.com/scoop_article_2.html” />
The post makes an important point:

Standout content tags work best when news publishers recognise not just their own quality content, but also the original journalistic contributions of others when your stories draw from the standout efforts of other publications. Linking out to other sites is well recognised as a best practice on the web, and we believe that citing others’ standout content is important for earning trust as you also promote your own standout work.

Google is asking news sites to use the tag a maximum of seven times a week so that it can recognise what is exceptional content.

  • The 10,000 Words blog was at Online News Association Conference and has more on the launch of the feature.

Google’s +1 button now acts like Facebook share

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Google+ users can now use the +1 button to share content with their circles of contacts within the new social network.

Following the development this week the button will act like Facebook’s share button in that anyone with a Google+ profile can directly share a link to their wall (or stream in Google+ terminology).

Google made the announcement on its blog yesterday and said it would be rolled out over the next few days.

The +1 button was launched at the beginning of June, allowing anyone logged in to a Gmail account to recommend web content to their contacts, who would then see a personally ranked suggestion when using Google Search. At the end of June Google+ was launched by the search engine giant which appeared to be taking on Facebook by creating its own social network.

The fact the button now acts like a Facebook share widget may persuade a few more news sites to adopt it. Take up early on appeared to have been slow based on often lower traffic referrals when compared to other share buttons.

In yesterday’s blog post, Google also announced another development of interest to publishers: the creation of “snippets”.

When you share content from the +1 button, you’ll notice that we automatically include a link, an image and a description in the sharebox. We call these snippets, and they’re a great way to jumpstart conversations with the people you care about.

Of course: publishers can benefit from snippets as well. With just a few changes to their webpages, publishers can actually customise their snippets and encourage more sharing of their content on Google+. More details are available on the Google Webmaster blog.

The video below takes you directly to an explanation of snippits.

 

Google turns up to social sharing party with +1

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Google +1 has launched for news sites, allowing users logged in to their Google account to recommend articles and sites to contacts, similar to the way Facebook’s ‘like’ button permits Facebook contacts to see a person’s favourite stories.

When someone with a Google account clicks the +1 button the page will then be privileged in relevant searches performed by that person’s Google contacts.

Google-owned sites, including Android Market, Blogger, Product Search and YouTube have added the button along with news sites including the Washington Post, Google announced on its blog.

We asked via Twitter which UK sites have already added the button and the Lincolnite, Made for Mums, Cooking with Mrs K and Kelvin Taylor’s blog all responded to tell us they had installed the button.

ReadWriteWeb, in this post, predicts +1 will be good for news sites but feels it may not work.

Is this compelling for website owners? Yes, probably. For web users who would click the button? That’s much less clear. For search users? Time will tell, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

You can add the +1 button by copying a line of code. This post explains how.

 

Google search looks to bloggers

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Word on the blogosphere is that Google is now publishing Google Blog search results in responses to main search queries.

And as far as the Journalism.co.uk blog goes it’s true. A search using just the search term Omgili brings up the recent post on our blog as fifth in the results.

As Problogger argues, this is good news for bloggers who will see their posts soar up the rankings and for users who want the most up to date discussion.

Several commenters ask whether this is related to Google’s recent aquisition of FeedBurner and whether it’s only blogs indexed by FeedBurner that feature in the results.