I am pretty fascinated with how Google News works and how the workflow runs there. I recently spotted a thread at the Google News Help forum which shows how not only does Google review publications periodically, but before removing publications, they may email those publications.
One site owner was upset his site no longer showed up in Google News. Inbal, a Googler, informed this site owner that after receiving some complaints from Google News users, the site was reviewed and removed. Inbal said:
The reason why we stopped crawling your content since July is that we periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users. When we reviewed your site we found that we can no longer include it in Google News at this time.We currently only include articles from sources that could be considered organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information. When we reviewed your site we weren't able to find this evidence of an organization.
What was more interesting was that Inbal said they do try to contact the publication before removing it, to get more facts about the complaints. Inbal said:
Please be assured that we tried to contact Eritrea Daily via email before removing it from Google News to offer the necessary remedy, however, alas, our emails bounced back, and due to some user complaints about no evidence for an organization behind the source we took this action, as we weren't able to find multiple writers and editors and accessible contact information on your site.
In this case, the publication was restored and placed back in Google News after being removed for a couple weeks. But learning about this process, I admit, does fascinate me a bit.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
