14 DAY TRIAL // New Scientist announces that the leader of online searches is planning to improve once again its services. The target of these improvements is Google's news service which will implement a solution for entry classification that will take into account the quality, sources, and credibility of the news. The database containing all the information and the sorting criteria of the news will compare different variables: the size of the news, the number of employees of the publication or the media trust and the traffic generated by a certain page.
Currently, Google News is offering thousands of results with news sorted according to the relevance of the key words supplied by the user. This criterion is completed by placing the most recent news at the top of the list. The system proposed by Google will give priority to the sources with the highest credibility and traffic on their site, like BBC, CNN or Associated Press, granting these sources the rightful importance.
Until now, if news published by an almost unknown source had contained several times the keyword typed in by the user, that source would have been placed ahead of renowned publications.
Google has already requested a patent for this system of classification, the company trying in this way to promote the sources with a bigger audience.
However, Google refrained from giving other details on how the search engine will sort the prestigious sites, if the traffic will be the only criterion or what other criteria favor a source over another.