Google changes algorithm to highlight original report in search

If you are a digital news publisher or a site producing online news, then this might be an important development for you. As from next time, your news report sourced from other publishers may not get as much traction in Google search.

The search engine giant has announced that it will elevate the original report, which requires significant time, effort and resources by the publisher, in search.

Some stories can also be both critically important in the impact they can have on our world and challenging to put together, requiring reporters to engage in deep investigative pursuits to dig up facts and sources said Google's vice president of news Richard Gingras in a blog post.

This is primarily to allow users to see original reporting along with other recent articles.

The search engine is doing this through close to 10K reviewers, whose feedbacks help train the Google algorithm that delivers search rankings.

Last week, Google had released its quality guidelines in which it instructs raters to use the highest rating, for original news reporting that provides information that would not otherwise have been known had the article not revealed it.

The feature would not be limited to Google News results, but also Google Search and Google Discover. However, Google did not reveal how these guidelines algorithm will work to identify the original reporting or what is the definition of original reporting.

Many observers feel that Goggle may naturally favour big news firms with investigative and large news teams. It is still unclear for larger number of small news publishers, how the move will impact them.

Over the years, media firms have complained against imitative news articles, who get almost as much web traffic as the original reporting. This may impact hundreds of news sites, which have syndicated posts directly wired from news agencies and big publishing houses.