Google decides to give priority to original reports in research »Nieman Journalism Lab

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Richard Gingras, Google's vice president of information, announced on Thursday that the company had modified its global search algorithm to "highlight the items we identify as significant original reports," and to keep these items in the first positions. for a long time.

The change is available in Google search now and will be extended to Google News and Google Discover soon, said Search Engine Land.

Google dares not define exactly what is the original report, saying: "There is no absolute definition of the original relationship nor absolute standard for establish the original character of a given article. This can mean different things for different newsrooms and publishers at different times. As a result, our efforts will constantly evolve as we work to understand the life cycle of an article. "

Among these "efforts", there are real humans who make judgments: the company noted that it had "more than 10,000 evaluators worldwide" evaluating Google's algorithm:

Their comments do not change the ranking of the specific results they review; instead, it is used to evaluate and improve algorithms in a way that applies to all results. The principles that guide their operation are described in our Guidelines for Research Evaluators, a public document that allows evaluators to better understand and evaluate the unique characteristics of the content in search results ….

We have just introduced a change allowing us to gather new comments so that our automated filing systems can bring out the original content better. To illustrate the update, in section 5.1 of the guidelines, we ask the evaluators to use the highest, "very high quality" score for original news reporting "which provides information that would not otherwise known if the article had not been revealed. Original, in-depth and investigative reporting requires a high degree of skill, time and effort.

In addition to recognizing individual instances of page-level reporting, we also ask reviewers to consider the overall reputation of the publisher for original reporting. The update to section 2.6.1 reads as follows: "Many other types of websites also have a reputation. For example, you may find that a newspaper (with an associated website) has won journalistic awards. Prestigious awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize, or a history of high quality original stories are solid evidence of a positive reputation. "

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