Is Google News Getting Spammy?

Jun 1, 2010 - 7:46 am 9 by
Filed Under Google

Over the past month or so, I have seen an increase in the number of complaint posts in the Google News Help Forum. Now, these complaints are mostly complaints about spam sites or irrelevant sites coming up in people's news alerts on Google News.

The thing is, there have always been complaints. Just it seems the complaints have increased. The increase can be due to a number of reasons, including but not limited to:

  • More people using the forums
  • More people using Google News
  • More spam in Google News
  • A broken algorithm but we know that got better

So I won't go out and say Google News is now worse than it was three months ago. But I will point out the Google News forum is much more active, in regards to spam reports, than it was three months ago.

Michael Martinez who has a keen eye to stuff like this posted a complaint in the Google News Help forum, which did not receive a response. He wrote:

Over the past few weeks I have increasingly found personal blog "articles" populating Google News query results (I mean, news.google.com and not news injections in Google's Web search results).

These articles are usually irrelevant, ill-informed, opinionated, foofy, frivolous, amateur thought-meanderings that don't even remotely resemble news stories.

I'm sure you're trying to improve the service but this is NOT an improvement. I rely on Google News Search every day for both personal and professional research. The noise-to-signal ratio is screamingly out of balance.

Please undo whatever you did to include all this useless fluff from personal blogs in Google News Search.

Do you think Google News is any less relevant than a few months ago? If so, why?

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 4, 2025

Jul 4, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June 2025 Core Update, Search Volatility, Insights Report, Ads & More

Jul 4, 2025 - 8:01 am
Bing Search

Bing Search Tests Zoomable & Sticky Related Searches

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google AI Mode Can Respond In Non-English Languages

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests Local Place Listings In Green

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Merchant Center Gains Automatic Shipping Updates

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Daily Search Forum Recap: May 31, 2010