Google to change how it prioritises news stories

Google is changing the way news stories appear on its search engine by boosting “original reporting” in the face of today’s fast-paced demand for information.

News outlets that carry out investigations or exclusive interviews do not always stay in the spotlight for long as other places begin to pick it up from them, the tech firm said.

To help users find the initial source of these stories, Google is updating its ranking mechanics to support original reporting.

“While we typically show the latest and most comprehensive version of a story in news results, we’ve made changes to our products globally to highlight articles that we identify as significant original reporting,” said Richard Gingras, vice president for news at Google.

“Such articles may stay in a highly visible position longer.

“This prominence allows users to view the original reporting while also looking at more recent articles alongside it.”

More than 10,000 raters around the world will be used to teach the algorithms what to look out for when weighing up the authoritativeness of individual pages.

However, Google said it had “no absolute definition of original reporting” and that it doesn’t have “an absolute standard for establishing how original a given article is”.

“It can mean different things to different newsrooms and publishers at different times, so our efforts will constantly evolve as we work to understand the life cycle of a story,” Mr Gingras added.