A patent for "systems and methods for improving the ranking of news articles" was granted to Google yesterday. It was originally filed in 2003.
The patent appears to provide a look at some of the factors Google may take into consideration when ranking articles for Google News. As Bill Slawski of SEO By the SEA
In one "implementation consistent with the principles of the invention," here are some factors that are mentioned:
- a number of articles produced by the news source during a first time period
- an average length of an article produced by the news source
- an amount of important coverage that the news source produces in a second time period
- a breaking news score
- an amount of network traffic to the news source
- a human opinion of the news source
- circulation statistics of the news source
- a size of a staff associated with the news source
- a number of bureaus associated with the news source
- a number of original named entities in a group of articles associated with the news source
- a breadth of coverage by the news source
- a number of different countries from which network traffic to the news source originates
- the writing style used by the news source
We can't consider these factors to be the absolute law for what Google uses to determine its news article rankings. Unless Google comes out and says "this is it," we need to just take it for what it is - the partial contents of a six-year old patent filing.
That said, the factors are worth considering when trying to determine how Google News ranks content. There is much more information to digest in the patent, so if you're feeling up to it, you can take a look at it analysis of it.
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