Back in December, Google threatened to shut down its search engine in Australia if the country’s News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC) were to become law. The NMBC wants to compensate news publishers for links to their content in Google’s search results. Days before this happened, Google just wrote up a deal with French publishers to license their […]

In 2020, YouTube videos were the top content featured on Google News. 11% of all Google News video content comes from YouTube, another Google property.

According to Facebook, the company will be bringing the dedicated News tab into the UK this coming January. This will be the first region outside of the US that will get Facebook’s News content. From Facebook’s post: “[W]e’re announcing new investments focused on journalism in the UK with the launch of Facebook News, a dedicated […]

On October 1, in an announcement, Google is rolling out Google News Showcase to select markets. Not only that, the company is also committing $1 billion to partnering publishers. Regarding News Showcase, here’s what Google said: “News Showcase is made up of story panels that will appear initially in Google News on Android. The product […]

Google is providing advice on what businesses should be doing with their Google My Business listings if they are affected by COVID-19. In order to assist customers, businesses who are affected by COVID-19 are being encouraged to update their Google My Business profile with the most accurate information. A new GMB help page has been […]

If you turned on the news, looked at the news on your device, it seems all we see is bad news.  But, in order to fight the perception that we’re all but heading downhill, news publishers are running dedicated “good news” sections or newsletters to counter the depressing news. Google has decided to follow suit, and as […]

The GDPR is now in effect, and on its heels is the proposed EU copyright reform for US technology companies.  The pending legislation would take the disastrous “link tax” approach applied in Germany and Spain across the whole of Europe. The idea behind this legislation is to harmonize copyright laws across Europe.  The European Commission wants to fix the fragmented set of laws and enforcement rules […]

With the launch of the AI-powered Google News on the evening of May 15, Google has also pulled support for two webmaster and SEO features for Google News publishers: The standout meta tag and the Editors Pick section On Twitter, Google posted about this change on the same evening, saying: As part of the new Google News, we have […]

Google has decided to drop its support for the news meta keywords tag, which was introduced specifically for news publishers back in 2012.  Several months ago, the search engine quietly stopped supporting it. Because Google didn’t announce the change, publishers continued using it.  By using the news meta keywords tag, you’ll find that it won’t help Google […]

Google has had their fair share of quarrels with European news publishers and governments in Germany and Spain, both of whom have tried getting the company to pay copyright fees for the indexing of news content.  Google has largely prevailed in these instances.  However, publishers haven’t been deterred from continuing to make the case that US internet […]