Random thoughts about Google News Algo tonight. Every once in a while MFP will pop onto the 'section front' (for US News, for example) and cause a burst of traffic for a short time before I'm bumped off.

I wonder if to get there your story has to have a high number of 'hot keywords'... The Google News Algo (GNA) could query their database of hot topics/searches then rearrange the news giving stories with those terms more weight.

Crazy?

I hope no newspaper people are reading (they never listened to me when I was there, in any case ;), and maybe it's super obvious, but headlines are important in Google News. As well as whether you have a photo or not. (I wonder if the GNA can figure out if it's a mugshot or action shot... wouldn't be that hard to do - have they bought any imaging companies lately? Help me out, dear readers, look into it!)

Those the hot keywords factor and a hundred other things probably go into it.

While we're on the subject - anyone have thoughts on GNA vs. Topix roboeditor? (Cute, though, that they named their robot scraper. I wonder how long the creativity of that company will last now that they're funded by big news money.)

Anyway, I think GNA tends to be more fair when dealing with small independent sites versus corporate news chains.

I do wish Topix and Google would both be more transparent with their algos, but I guess that would make it easier for spammers to abuse the system.

Google News does have the ability to read a news xml feed. I haven't tried that yet, but I really should. I wonder if it would give a boost to SE traffic.

I've also added automatic Technorati tagging to all MFP stories/content.

The long tail is one way I can better big media, at least for the moment. (Didn't the NY Times tear down their while recently?)

Anyway, Google News on the mind for the moment, so I thought I'd share some random thoughts as I plug away in my apartment somewhere in the Midwest, behind enemy lines newspaper-wise.

Newspaper wise.

Hope.

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