Wednesday, March 30, 2005

What's the story with Google news?

The mystery of the Google news algorithms is intriguing. How do they select which stories to display?

Private Radio has created a wee script that cites a continuously updated list of sources on the main Google news pages. It doesn't actually explain the decision making process, but it does show many stories were used from each source and that raises a bunch of other questions: How come ABC (US) is the top source of stories for the Australian Google news? Why does BBC news rate below Xinhua, The Scotsman, The LA Times, News 24 and Bloomberg, among others?

Of the top ten news sources only 4 are Australian, and the 6th top source is the Chinese agency Xinhua. What's going on there?

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