According to AdAge, members of Google's Publishers Advisory Council (a small, invitation-only group of publishers ranging from ESPN to The Wall Street Journal) are raising a stink over professional media sources and how their content is ranked in Google search results:
Many publishers resent the criteria Google uses to pick top results, starting with the original PageRank formula that depended on how many links a page got. But crumbling ad revenue is lending their push more urgency; this is no time to show up on the third page of Google search results. And as publishers renew efforts to sell some content online, moreover, they're newly upset that Google's algorithm penalizes paid content.
"You should not have a system," one content executive said, "where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately."
Google has somewhat acknowledged the challenge. In October 2008, the company's chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt, said the Internet is a "'cesspool' where false information thrives." Several months later, in January 2009, Schmidt spoke again about newspapers' financial problems and what Google can do to help them:
They don't have a problem of demand for their product, the news. People love the news. They love reading, discussing it, adding to it, annotating it. The Internet has made the news more accessible. There's a problem with advertising, classifieds and the cost itself of a newspaper: physical printing, delivery and so on. And so the business model gets squeezed. ... We have a mechanism that enhances online subscriptions, but part of the reason it doesn't take off is that the culture of the Internet is that information wants to be free. We've tried to get newspapers to have more tightly integrated products with ours. We'd like to help them better monetize their customer base. We have tools that make that easier. I wish I had a brilliant idea, but I don't. These little things help, but they don't fundamentally solve the problem.
It seems Google knows and is acknowledging that there are flaws in the page ranking of professional media organizations. Perhaps in the April 30 meeting with the Publishers Advisory Council, Google will do something about it.
In the meantime, news organizations need to do what they can to help boost their search engine rankings. Here are a few resources to help you get started in your newsroom:
...In light of the anecdote former WSJ.com managing editor Bill...
