Nick has a post over on Vallywag called "Google News run by idiots, please write that down" which sounds a bit extreme but actually might not be that far off. He's pointing to an entry on Jon Udell's blog which is talking about the wishy-washy-no-clear-standards by which sites are added to, or kept out of Google News. Jon points out that the actual news articles on www.infoworld.com are not indexed by Google News, meanwhile his blog at weblog.infoworld.com is being included. This isn't the first time something like this has come up, but it's a pretty obvious issue since it's happening on one site. Another great example of their weird acceptance policy, if they even have one that is, is the fact that the Search Engine Watch Blog is included, while John Battelle's Searchblog isn't - even though they cover a good deal of the same news.

We've seen this discrimination (don't really know what else to call it) first hand with Metroblogging. Google News includes our Los Angeles art specific blog art.blogging.la, but declined to include the main site www.blogging.la. They claimed it wasn't original news, but rather covered news reported elsewhere. They specifically asked if we could create a section of the site which highlighted the original news which they could then include in their index. We created the section and then they turned it down again without reason. Meanwhile other Los Angeles sites that cover similar topics as we do also have had mixed results - LAist and LAVoice are included, but LAObserved is not. All three of those sites, like blogging.la, include some original news and some commentary on local news reported elsewhere. Why would one be added while another refused? Assuming that the "original news" or "first hand reporting" is where they've set the bar, surely since almost every major news organization linked to, quoted from, or referenced our New Orleans Blog during Hurricane Katrina that must have made the cut right? Wrong, turned down then as well with the same "not original content" rejection. When I asked for more info, specifically how people who were in New Orleans talking about what they were seeing out of their front window was not original content, I received no reply. Same goes for last year's London bombings, the big earthquake in Pakistan, and the recent bombings in Mumbai. These are documented in the Metroblogging Wikipedia article, but not considered news by Google.

Since Google has refused to give any kind of public policy about what they choose to add or what they choose to decline we're left guessing. We've heard rumors that it depends entirely on whose desk your submission ends up on - that some folks who are making the call refuse to add anything they think is a blog, while others are more receptive. A friend who asked not to be named submitted his site over and over again, getting rejection after rejection just to test this and sure enough about 12 submissions later he was added without issue. Metroblogging meets all of the secret guidelines that Google gave Jon Undell (but haven't published themselves), yet we're still turned down time and time again. Is it crazy to ask that there be a set of public guidelines that if met a site would be included, and if not, wouldn't be?