Google News indexes tens of thousands of articles a day, but not all of them are original. Publishers can now use two metatags to help us determine us which URL we should consider the original version of an article:
syndication-source indicates which URL is the canonical version of a syndicated article.
original-source indicates which URL should be credited with breaking a story. At this time, we will only be collecting usage data for this tag in order to determine its effectiveness. For now, no ranking changes will take place based on this tag.
How to use the tags
Both tags are standard HTML metatags, and should be added to the <head> element of the article page:
<meta name="syndication-source" content="http://www.example.com/wire_story_1.html">
<meta name="original-source" content="http://www.example.com/scoop_article_2.html">
Please note that in both cases, the content attribute contains a URL. The URL of the current page can be used to indicate that it should receive credit with either tag. Our expectation is that you should only need to use one of these tags for a particular article, since they address different scenarios. If a publisher uses both syndication-source and original-source on one article, we'll pick one of the two to use.
What the tags mean
syndication-source
If you are a publisher who syndicates content, or who syndicates content from another source, then you should use the syndication-source tag. The content URL should be a long-lived ("bookmark-able") URL referring to the syndicating source.
Example usage
-
If you publish an article and syndicate it to other sites: You should use
syndication-sourceand place your site's URL for that article in thecontentfield. You should also instruct sites that re-publish your syndicated content to usesyndication-sourceand place your site's URL for that article in thecontentfield. -
If you publish a syndicated article: You should use
syndication-sourceto refer Google News to the original URL. -
If you publish a syndicated article, but you don't know the original URL for the article: You can use
syndication-sourceby including the home page of the originating site in the metatag'scontentfield.
original-source
This tag should be used to identify the article that first broke a story. As with syndication-source, the content URL should be long-lived, and can be the URL of the current page.
Unlike syndication-source, however, a publisher can use multiple instances of this tag to point to any and all of the articles that deserve some credit for reporting this story.
Important note: At this time, Google News will not make any changes to article ranking based on this tag. We think it is a promising method for detecting originality among a diverse set of news articles, but we won't know for sure until we've seen a lot of data. By releasing this tag, we're asking publishers to participate in an experiment that we hope will improve Google News and, ultimately, online journalism.
Example usage
-
If you publish an article that consists entirely of original reporting: Use the
original-sourcetag and refer to your article's URL in thecontentfield of the tag. -
If you publish an article and want to identify the original source that broke the story: Use the
original-sourcetag and refer to that article's URL in thecontentfield of the tag.
Frequently asked questions
Why should I cite my competitors? Doesn't that just make their stories more likely to outrank mine?
Publishers frequently cite other publications, but typically in the text of their articles. These metatags merely codify those citations so that our crawler can understand them. In that sense, these metatags correspond to current publisher practices.
If we detect that a site is using these metatags inaccurately (e.g., only to promote their own content), we'll reduce the importance we assign to their metatags. And, as always, we reserve the right to remove a site from Google News if, for example, we determine it to be spammy.
I added one of these tags, why aren't you showing my article?
Eventually, if we believe they prove useful, these tags will be incorporated among the many other signals that go into ranking and grouping articles in Google News. For now, syndication-source will only be used to distinguish among groups of duplicate identical articles, while original-source is only being studied and will not factor into ranking.
What's to stop a malicious publisher from claiming they're the original source of everything?
If we find sites abusing these tags, we may, at our discretion, either ignore the site's source tags or remove the site from Google News entirely. As with any other publisher-supplied metadata, we will be taking steps to ensure the integrity and reliability of this information.
Why didn't you use the hNews spec or the Canonical tag?
We felt that the options currently in existence addressed different use cases or were insufficient to achieve our goals. The more accurate metadata is out there on the web, the better the web will be.