Google News declined to include IPR in their news index. Here’s what the form said:
We reviewed your site and are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We currently only include sites with news articles that provide timely reporting on recent events. This means we don’t include informational and how-to articles, classified ads, job postings, fictitious content, event announcements or advice columns.
We appreciate your suggestion and will log your site for consideration should our guidelines change in the future.
Thanks for your interest in Google News.
Regards,
The Google Team
I hate this kind of boilerplate response, which clearly does not apply to IPR. But I’m curious to see what others think. What can we do to improve? Or should we just accept this and move on?
32 responses so far ↓
1 Darryl W. Perry // Nov 28, 2012 at 4:24 pm
I’ve gotten similarly worded “letters” form them in the past regarding Free Press Publications. My 2 cents, don’t worry about it and continue forward.
2 Stewart Flood // Nov 28, 2012 at 4:24 pm
It would take a lot more “reporters” around the country, but if you could get postings of news and events related to local party activities from the LP, Greens, etc, you might become a more visible “clearing house” of information.
There are a lot of articles on this site that are just references to news on other sites. It is probably too high a percentage for Google to accept you as a news site.
The comments and discussions are actually the most interesting part of the site. Sometimes the real stories are in the comments, and the article merely served to start the conversation going.
It is unfortunate that Google does not understand that.
3 Jill Pyeatt // Nov 28, 2012 at 4:46 pm
I agree that more original articles might improve our situation for Google News. However, a lot of what we discuss here are articles someone else has written and published elsewhere, but that writers here think will interest our readers. Some of the articles with the most comments are in that category.
I’m a little unclear, however: Is this the rejection IPR received in the past, or is this a new rejection?
4 paulie // Nov 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm
As I said before, I’m not sure what if anything can be done about it.
We’ve resubmitted multiple times, and once they had listed a site and took it off it’s very hard to get back on (if it can be done at all).
5 Jeremy C. Young // Nov 28, 2012 at 6:40 pm
I wonder whether you could get someone on the phone, or get a real person to explain why the site is not listable. To me, it seems as if IPR already meets these guidelines.
6 paulie // Nov 28, 2012 at 7:33 pm
It’s not the kind of company where it’s easy to get through, much less to someone that knows anything and can do anything about it. You have to be extremely persistent and, perhaps, lucky.
7 wredlich // Nov 28, 2012 at 8:05 pm
“Is this the rejection IPR received in the past, or is this a new rejection?”
New rejection.
“There are a lot of articles on this site that are just references to news on other sites. It is probably too high a percentage for Google to accept you as a news site.”
That’s not what the explanation said.
8 wredlich // Nov 28, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Also it just irks me that I see other sites, like Hammer of Truth, that are listed even though our site is much better and they make no effort to conform to the guidelines.
I have the same issue with my other site, WestBocaNews.com. There’s a “BocaNewsNow.com” that is nowhere near as good as our site but they’re in Google News. They don’t comply with the guidelines and we do. Still, we’re not listed and they are. Irritating!!
I’ll get over it.
9 Independent Green Party Voter // Nov 28, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Keep trying.
You might consider inviting more of us to post stories.
For example, I talked with New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg today on Capital Hill. Details of that might make a story worthy of your post.
The Independent Green Party of Virginia collected the signatures and put Mayor Bloomberg on the ballot for President in 2008 in our state. After about a month the Mayor said many thanks, but declined the nomination.
Great American patriot – leading the way on Green jobs, Green issues worldwide Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
10 From Der Sidelines // Nov 28, 2012 at 8:48 pm
Send a reply back rejecting the rejection, telling them that their reasoning is not applicable to this site and that as such they should start listing IPR in Google News immediately. CC Bing and Yahoo on it.
11 Matt Cholko // Nov 28, 2012 at 10:40 pm
What will we/you gain by being included in the Google News index?
12 paulie // Nov 28, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Lots more traffic.
13 john c jackson // Nov 28, 2012 at 11:06 pm
This site was listed in Google News at one time, right? I imagine being listed in Google News = higher traffic/readership.
I know for myself, I will do “News” searches on specific persons/topics. just as an example, if I want to see what Gary Johnson ( or the LP, GP, Ron Paul, whatever) is up to I’m not going to Google “Gary Johnson” in a web search- that is too broad and stale. I’m going to search or have an alert for News. I might do a Blog Search, but not likely since that will probably pull up all kinds of aggregated nonsense.
I never come here from search.. i just come here as a regular reader. But I know from having run blogs and other sites myself that relying on regular readership is pretty narrow ( not to mention hard to monetize). I’ve had blogs that had like 6 “readers” but would get 10,000 visitors to a post off a decent search.
14 paulie // Nov 28, 2012 at 11:22 pm
Yep. 2008-2010.
15 PeterO // Nov 29, 2012 at 3:49 am
Their standards seem to be rather arbitrary. Clearly IPR is more of a news site than some things I see popping up there.
16 Zapper // Nov 29, 2012 at 4:39 am
@9 Give us a hint. What did Mayor Mike have to say?
17 Stephen VanDyke // Nov 29, 2012 at 6:26 am
?_?
18 Stephen VanDyke // Nov 29, 2012 at 6:28 am
???
19 Stephen VanDyke // Nov 29, 2012 at 6:36 am
I was going to post the look of disapproval.
Buuuuut….
This comment form sucks at accepting unicode characters, so there’s at least one thing IPR is not “much better” at than HoT.
PS- I’ve gotten gossip/celeb websites *months old* listed in GoogleNews without any drama and tend to get articles on front page search results with a breeze. I may not be a hotshot businessman/lawyer, but I do know the guidelines of the web indexing business pretty damn well.
20 Peter Gemma // Nov 29, 2012 at 7:34 am
Oftentimes when you Google an IPR story by candidate, subject, writer’s name, it pops up. I heartedly agree with Darryl Perry – move forward and concentrate on what we’ve done best.
21 paulie // Nov 29, 2012 at 10:04 am
Yeah, I don’t see why to hate on the Hammer. I’d love for IPR to be listed again but we don’t need to tear anyone down to build ourselves up.
22 paulie // Nov 29, 2012 at 10:19 am
“I will count your calories, take away your guns and video cameras (unless you are a cop), and defend police brutality against peaceful protesters and common everyday people minding their own business and walking down the street”?
“I support US wars in the middle east and central Asia, and poor people’s kids need another place to get shot besides on my city’s streets”?
“Yes, I smoked pot and enjoyed it, but I send lots of people to jail and destroy their lives for doing the same thing I did and no, I don’t feel bad about it”?
“9/11 tenth anniversary….first responders not invited”?
“I supports a federal ID database that uses DNA and fingerprint technology to keep track of all citizens”?
“I am a supporter of the USA PATRIOT Act”?
“I am in favor of providing tax breaks to big corporations for the good of the whole community. If you’re not a big corporation you can pay the difference or fail, I really don’t care what you do, you are like the stuff that gets stuck to the bottom of my shoe as far as I’m concerned”?
“Don’t forget, I endorsed George W. Bush”?
23 Jill Pyeatt // Nov 29, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Are we talking about the same Mayor
Bloomberg who supposedly turned away food for Sandy victims because they couldn’t control sugar and salt content?
24 paulie // Nov 29, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Yep, same guy.
25 Wiseburn // Nov 29, 2012 at 2:05 pm
I believe we need to have a “news” category and only classify items that qualify as News to with that category.
Once that’s done, we can submit http://ipr.com/news to Google’s Newsfeed and hopefully that will be included.
I believe Management’s job at this point should be making minor changes to improve and modernize the site before moving ahead and trying for growth. I know I need more time to regroup after the election and focus on fundamentals.
26 Wiseburn // Nov 29, 2012 at 2:08 pm
@9 Yes! Please contribute your news stories to IPR.
27 wredlich // Nov 29, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Sorry. I wasn’t trying to talk down the Hammer. I didn’t mean it’s not a good site at all. I like the Hammer.
But the Hammer does less to comply with Google News guidelines than we do, and conforms less to what our denial e-mail said they’re looking for.
28 wredlich // Nov 29, 2012 at 2:49 pm
@9, we’d be very happy to have you write articles on IPR. Please e-mail me (wredlich@gmail.com) and I’ll set you up with an account.
29 just real // Nov 29, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Let’s get real here. This is a political decision on the part of Google. Any excuse to marginalize dissenting voices is one they will take.
You could slavishly devote yourself to jumping through their every hoop — you’d probably have to move the “open thread” to a separate forum functionality feed for one. You’d have to keep posting as few articles as you have been this week… But that could easily compromise the dynamism and importance of the site.
I’d say stick near the new guidelines, but don’t be shy about (newsworthy) running press releases verbatim with little or no commentary. Then you just have to keep at having a good, relevant site and embarrass google into listing it. Maybe there is a way to get Drudge to link to IPR. That would help.
30 paulie // Nov 29, 2012 at 5:10 pm
They initially listed us after only two weeks. It takes most sites months. See http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/06/ipr-now-on-google-news/
I’ll keep doing that until I get a definitive “stop or leave” injunction. While I too prefer it when I have something to add to a story, there will be a lot less stories if and when that becomes a hard and fast rule, as I often can’t think of anything to add. I’d prefer to allow our readers a chance to comment on as many stories as possible.
IMO we already have one. They’re not budging.
Has anyone tried asking him?
31 Wiseburn // Nov 30, 2012 at 10:22 am
I think Google might be happier with a few technical site changes. For one, they require a unique (at least 3 digit) number in the URL which we don’t have. I would like the news articles styling to look more like a news articles.
On my list after some other upgrades.
32 Paulie // Nov 30, 2012 at 1:11 pm
I would like the news articles styling to look more like a news articles.
In what way?
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