Mountain View, California — In an attempt to garner more traffic and pageviews Google News has unfurled a new feature for news agencies to designate specific stories as worthy of being called out with a “featured” label on the Google News U.S. home page and in search results, according to a report.
The Google News today released a new metadata tag to help news publications highlight their original, quality content to stories when they have a scoop, exclusive, investigative project, or presumably need to suck up to an advertiser.
The announcement, made today at the Online News Associate conference in Boston, is the latest attempt by Google News to help readers find relevant articles amid the clatter of the 24-hour online news cycle.
A Google representative speaking to the AP explained that a tagged and chosen story could persist on Google News longer than it normally would, as other news agencies follow with their own takes on the news. Also, if a news organization tags more than seven stories in a week, the algorithm will become suspicious and give the tags less weight–or discount them completely.
Moreover, the Google News team is calling for publications to apply a new Standout tag in their HTML to mark “exceptional original reporting, deep investigative work, scoops and exclusives, and various special projects that quite clearly stand out,” the company says in a blog post.
The tagged articles may be selected with a “Featured” label in Google’s listings, but would not guarantee elevation, but Google’s David Smydra posted that it will be factored into the Google News search algorithm.
To include the Standout tag, add it to the HTML header of an article, or to any link pointing to another site’s article, like this:
Google anticipates that the feature catches on as more than just a tool for self-promotion, since it encourages respect and recognition between publications.
“Linking out to other sites is well recognized 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,” the company says.
The system also allows news agencies give each other props. Another set of tags lets them designate rivals’ stories as worthy of special treatment.
“The way we have formulated standout is that when it is used both ways–for calling out their own work and calling out the work of others–that builds our trust in that source,” a Google representative told the AP.