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Comment by Klinky | Hacker News Reader

One thing that irks me is Google News. It's hard to get your site listed on Google News but when you see some of the sites that are listed, you have to wonder why Google makes it so difficult. Some search terms bring up "news sites" that are essentially devoted to spamming health remedies and playing them off as though they were real news articles.

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I don't know, Google News actually doesn't seem very spammy to me. I just searched for "diabetes" - this is usually a good one to check if an index is spammed - and while it brings up some sensationalist garbage (that's life for you), it doesn't seem to find anything which wants my credit card number right now. Even a spam-king search like "weight loss", while it finds nothing interesting, doesn't seem like pure spam.

Take a look at game search terms, like Warcraft. There are plenty of sites that sell in game currencies or items, along with sites that republish news from other sites mixed in the results.

Have you thought that's because many people do buy currency and items?

These sites are masquerading as news sites with poor English rehashing of old news, or just pasting news directly from other sites. They aren't quality results that belong in Google News.

Do a search for RezVera. I research digestive health news & this has been coming up a lot over the last few weeks. Either copycat sites or PR sites that link back to another site with an iframe containing a short form promo offering the supplement for $60 bucks. Blah.

I checked it out. RezVera is obviously a commercial name, not a generic name, and its entire internet presence consists of a few PR sites. Google News finds them all, and puts them on one page. It's not like they are crowding out better RezVera news. There is maybe something to be done here about delisting these sites altogether, but I don't see a huge problem for this particular search. Or is there some legitimate review of it, which gets crowded out?

I am not searching for RezVera. I am searching "gastritis" "irritable bowel syndrome", etc... RezVera is just a quick way to see the sites that get listed on Google, I assure you those sites come up for legit searches too.

If you do a search for "Irritable Bowel Syndrome" & then sort by date 3 of the top 4 choices are: "Manuka Honey Capsules Announced", "New Supplement [RezVera] Shows Great Promise for Gastritis", "CSIRO cereal a real superfood". Spammy McSpam Spam.

Sometimes press releases blur the lines between advertising & news, I get that, but these sites aren't really that useful & look almost like they're gaming Google News to advertise. Rarely do they actually have any authoritative links backing up their claims, which is something Google supposedly wants from sites joining Google News.

This is the problem with the customization of Google - for me, these are not in the top 4 results even sorted by date, although 2 of your titles show up further down. But yes, I see your point now, someone spammed Google News as well. Scum. I think it's still less spammy than the Web search, since some kind of human attention is required to get in there.

I'm looking into listing a site on google news. Can you elaborate on the problems you've encountered when trying to list?

Google News, like a lot of their services is a black box that no one really knows how it works or what criteria they use to pick sites for inclusion.

Generic Google News talking points are:

You need at least 3 or more editors/staff, with some sort of bio page detailing who they are.

You need to push a lot of content through your site. What "a lot" is, no one really knows.

Content needs to meet a certain quality level. What the criteria are for "quality content" is anyone's guess. If you're big enough you won't be held to this as strictly.

Content should offer an independent viewpoint and not be slanted to one side or another. If you're big enough you aren't held as strictly to this.

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