Google Seeks Patents on Ranking News
Web search leader Google Inc. has applied for U.S. and international patents on technology to rank stories on its news site based on the quality of the news source.
Google’s search engine now automatically scours about 4,500 news sources and highlights stories typically by popularity and timeliness. The company has not disclosed full details of its ranking system.
The site, Google News, gathers articles from disparate news outlets such as ABC News, Voice of America, the Christian Science Monitor, the New China News Agency, Reuters, Bloomberg News and the Los Angeles Times.
Industry watchers said that, over time, Google News had come to depend on more-established news providers for its content.
A Google spokesman confirmed that the company had applied for the patents, but declined to comment on whether the company was using the technology.
As weblogs and other commentary sites proliferate, postings from some have received prominent play within search result pages and on online news-gathering sites. Some of the postings have carried biased or inaccurate claims.
The technology that Google is attempting to patent may help the company choose the most reliable information sources. Some Web commentators have said it would create a bias toward mainstream news sources.
Google filed its U.S. patent application in September 2003, and it is in line for review by patent examiners. It covers “systems and methods for improving the ranking of news articles” based on the “quality” of the news source.
According to the application, factors determining such rankings would include the amount of important coverage produced by an identified news source, network traffic to the source, circulation statistics, staff size, breadth of coverage and the number of bureaus the news source operates.
Google’s related international patent application, published in late March under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, was first reported in New Scientist magazine this week.
“It sounded to me like it would be useful not just for news but for search results as well,” said Topix.net Chief Executive Rich Skrenta, who had not reviewed the patent applications.
The risk in depending only on large, established news providers is that a news site “might be leaving a lot of really good material on the floor,” Skrenta said.
