"Less news from" option really should be "ban" to filter out spammers, trash servers that require logins etc. Right now it doesn't work at all I get a bunch of links in Google news that lead to infuriation instead of content. Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please let us ban them.
Also "More news from" doesn't really work as I and I am sure others would like it to. When a story appears on AP/Reuters and is available on a clean page without any idiotic ads I want Google news to select that page as default instead of the thousands of spammers that steal the story and split it on 20 garbage filled pages.
A couple points: 1. As Xian mentioned, you can
promote or demote any news source by following the simple steps at http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1005661. This only affects your own experience on Google
News. 2. As Gary observes, it's important that source inclusion
decisions be made impartially, so your personal settings won't
automatically affect what everyone else sees.
I also want to be able to control the news sources that feed into my News area of iGoogle. I don't consider Fox News to be actual news, and would prefer not to receive stories they publish.
I agree with the posters before me! Both the OP's preference for the "clean" story from news agencies like AP or Reuters as well as the next poster's evaluation of Fox News ;) ... Any news agency/company who have to use a slogan like "Fair & Balanced" you just know aren't... just like you can be sure that any website advertising with something being free is really taking money for some kind of service ;)
There is a difference between Users being able to individually filter the content they see and Users getting Google to delist publishers from Google News.
The first idea is great - the second idea is horrific.
I can see publishers clandestinely getting their competition removed from Google because it is 'garbage'. Because this type of abuse is possible it is best to let these decisions lie with Google.
I (we?) don't want Google to ban any "news" sites from Google News (on a global level) we'd like to be able to ban sites (on a personal level) through settings (upper right corner if you haven't noticed).
I sure hope there's a way, I've been trying to figure out how to filter out Bleacher Report articles for months. The site seriously undermines the credibility of Google News.
I also support this idea - rather than having to wait for Google to make the move and pull bad content from the index, users could simply block the content they don't like.
Any employees out there reading this? It would be a deceptively simple fix...
@Xian We meet again - and yet again you didn't read what I said. Please read it and you will see I agree with the idea that users should be able to individually filter their sources. I don't think I could have made it more clearer.
Please have the maturity not to turn this into a personal vendetta. You say in your original post that you like the first idea (being able to filter content on a personal level) and then you say "the second idea is horrific" jumping to the conclusion that Google should "delist" or ban specific publishers. Where does the OP ever state that? The OP says that (s)he prefers the "clean" version of a news story if it's available from AP/Reuters and "want Google news to select that"... nowhere does the OP mention that Google News should ban any sites, in fact the "second idea" is still referring to the settings of "less/more news from".
Obviously you have a point if Google were to begin censoring certain news sites on a "global level" we could very well be on the way to something horrific, but nobody is suggesting that. Yet even that is up to discussion... I would be surprised if there wasn't already some filtering going on... some sites being sympathetic to various so-called "terrorist" organizations is probably having their version of what happened filtered.
@Xian Are you kidding? Is it your mission in life to follow me around the Google News forum constantly insulting me? And ironically it is you who accuse me of immaturity. Thankfully you have flogged this topic to death now - I think everyone gets the idea behind 'banning' sources.
I'm simply following up on a thread I've posted in and commenting on posts directly aimed at me... a quite common and normal behavior in Internet forums. Let me also point out that as far as I know you and I have only "met" in one other thread than this and in both threads I have posted before you... so again: I'm only following up. If you feel personally offended or targeted I'm sorry... that isn't my idea of fun!
There is bunch of stuff that needs to be removed, yet Google does not care. Huffington Post? Seriously? They re-write everything for Sci/Tech
Just because its Huff Post does not mean they are allowed to break every TOS and Guidelines of Google News.
My husbands site was removed with no indication as to why, his site was getting 1.5 mil views per month yet they removed it after being on there for 2 years!
A couple points: 1. As Xian mentioned, you can
promote or demote any news source by following the simple steps at http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1005661. This only affects your own experience on Google
News. 2. As Gary observes, it's important that source inclusion
decisions be made impartially, so your personal settings won't
automatically affect what everyone else sees.
@NewsPMJustin The problem with the promote/demote feature is that it doesn't work. I've had the Christian Science Monitor listed in the "less news from:" field for ages and I still keep getting their articles. A better solution would be a true blacklist that will NEVER return any results from the specified site. Is there any reasoning as to why Google chose a "soft" filter vs a "hard" filter like I proposed?
Hi, OP here again. In case it was confusing to anyone I was only talking about banning sources from my personalized google news page, not the rest of the world.
@NewsPMJustin I am well aware of those options but they just don't work. I still get tons of garbage from sources in the "less from" categories, and the "more from" part doesn't really work either. In fact those preferences don't seem to make any obvious difference at all. I (and others obviously) want to be able to ***totally ban*** sources (from our customized news pages) and give huge preference to others.
I've about decided to give up on reading Google News.
I have specified "less from" for sources to be shown in my personal edition of Google News - including the Mirror, the Sun, FOX news and other publishers where sensationalism is the content and facts are seen only to get in the way.
And then - in the World section - the leading story on Japan is from Mirror.co.uk
If you won't let us completely ban certain sources - can you please explain to me HOW/WHY a source would be selected? Why the mirror when there are so many other - credible - accurate - responsible sources for news - and HOW/WHY would you select that story when I have expressly marked "less from" the Mirror?
Google is completely missing the boat on this one and will eventually lose all readers if you don't get your act together and implement what we ask for - a BAN on news sources for our PERSONAL editions of Google News.
Come on - it's a simple filter for search results. I cannot fathom any technical or commercial reason not to implement this - TODAY.
Hi Tyzer, I completely agree with your statement. I find myself scanning through the Entertainment section morning to night trying to understand the algorithm of Google News and how we could get our site (http://www.bloginity.com) up there. It sometimes seems nearly impossible as the sites are so odd. Content is poorly written, I've seen some stuff up on the homepage of Entertainment with grammar errors, misspells, terrible web design & of course, not to mention that the source is not even a trusted one. It's just like copying out of news sources.
actually, that "lame" options really works, you can demote the source (eg. foxnews.com) and it wont show in list of news. It might appear in "alternative sources" but wont be the first big article that google news will show you
@Mouriso: In my experience the "less from" does exactly as stated - I get "less" from the news sources I specify. Unfortunately - that's not the point. I don't want ANY news from these sources to appear in my personalized edition of Google News. Any news from Fox - the Mirror - the Sun is highly prejudicial and sensational and is a waste of good electrons.
@Spinozza: I don't see how this would "kill" Google News at all. It might make it so that some categories had "0" articles in them - but that would be fine with me. I'd rather have no news than to have irrelevant, untruthful and other news that just shouldn't even be published.
@Dantzig: Trying to get your content to appear on Google News is a different issue altogether - I have no idea what it takes for Google News to decide that an article should appear in either the generic version - or an individuals personal edition - of Google News.
The bottom line remains - if we want to ban some news sources it should be possible - and that is a 100% complete ban so that those news sources NEVER appear in our personal edition of Google News.
With Tyzer and Dantzig on this. I have no idea how some of these backwater sources end up at the top of my feed just by reposting a Reuters brief. It looks like these people are gaming the system and Google really needs to get on top of it.
The "Less News from" button doesn't seem to be working very well for me either. I still get lots of junk from Russia Today and Fox etc. Prefer an outright ban.
Also, why can't we just click a button on a news article to make it go away? I will visit Google News several times throughout the day and it would be nice to not see the same garbage article or video up there for days at a time. That to me would be a minimum.
Regardless of who we all want to get rid of/see more from, the point is--the existing option doesn't seem to work. A nice slider would fix the problem (None-Less-Same-More-All).
None: Banned from my personal edition of Google News. KTHXBAI.
Less: Fewer articles than the "average" appearance of similar sources. Say NYT fits into Cat. A, Big News. So I want less NYT, and it shows up fewer times than the average source from the Big News category would.
Same: Default. Let Google decide.
More: More-than-its-category (see Less, but invert).
All: Pretty much every news story from this source shows up in your Google News.
Late last year on this thread I brought up the issue of the possibility of Google News banning some publishers due to user complaints.
I mentioned that this would open the way for competitors to get publishers delisted. And now I am pretty sure this is happening !!!!!!!!!!!!
I had a site delisted from Google News - it had been on for 3 years.
I
got a message saying "Thanks for your willingness to provide content to
Google News, but there are certain guidelines that must be followed."
The answer is of course typically vague and unhelpful.
However
- I had another thread open with Google News concerning the inclusion
of new news sections to my site for Google News. I asked them why I had
been delisted, and what they said made me choke:
"Thank you for your note. 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."
So user complaints appear to have lead to us being delisted?! I
@
NewsPMJustin says above: "As Gary observes, it's important that source inclusion
decisions be made impartially, so your personal settings won't
automatically affect what everyone else sees."
There is nothing impartial about how Google deals with user complaints when delisting sites. To think that user complaints are leading to delisting is worrying as these things are dealt with behind closed doors.
Please allow Publishers the opportunity to at least see the nature of the complaints levelled against them. This will help us improve! And of course will set our minds at ease with regards to the suspicion that it is competing publishers that are driving delistings!!!
For anyone interested, the site is www.economy-news.co.uk
Any feedback on the site, and the above mentioned issue is welcome.
I know how to demote a source for me, but what about when it's clearly bad for all users?
Several times over the last few days I have seen story links I clicked on only to be taken to the root node of a twitter feed that is completely useless. See here: http://twitter.com/breakingnews
These links don't even go to individual tweets, just the twitter user and all the tweets are just recycled aggregation of other people's stories.
I really hope Google does not acquiesce to the tiny minority of users who want to BAN news sites. Let them ban news sources on the iGoogle Homepage, since that is a page for personalized content. Do not let users ban news sources on news.google.com, however. It builds character for users to be able to put up with and filter out bad news on their own. It is good for skepticism for users to be "forced" to read a story from Fox News every once in a while.
In short, allowing users to ban news sources on news.google.com will lead to a less informed population who are less capable of forming their own opinions. I think the last thing we, as a nation, need right now is encouragement to stick our heads in the sand and ignore anything we don't 'like'.
@ejgregory - Please understand that no one (well - I guess almost no one) here wants Google to ban news sources from the general feed.
We are all using the customized feed and would like to ban news sources that are presented to us as individuals. Some people don't like FOX news, others can't live without it. Our point is this: If Google is going to allow us to customize our newsfeed - let us completely eliminate sources that we choose.
@ItsMeeee - I really like the idea of a "show less" button within the news feed itself. I know that Google has a "block" option for sources in search results - all we are asking is that we get the same choice within news.
And now - to balance all of this with a counter argument I want to point everyone who's got 15 minutes to go and listen to the TED video on Content Filter Bubbles... and if you think about it the way I do you can see that sometimes we are creating our own content filter bubbles. Is that a good thing - I don't know... Discuss... after watching the video here of course: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html - I am in no way involved with Ted.com and do not benefit from promoting this video in any way.
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Please let us ban news sources
