Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan answered to the 404 Media article Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles. In summary, Sullivan stated that Google can always improve and that their method of filtering Google News was based on date rather than relevancy (relevancy filtering being the default).
Go read the article first; be aware that accessing it requires a subscription fee.
Next, this is Danny Sullivan's reply, which he shared on Bluesky, Mastodon, and X:
Before I quote, allow me to summarize:
(1) AI content is not being promoted by Google News
(2) The article's examples demonstrate how the author utilized unique searches and filters to highlight AI information above Google News' usual settings.
(3) He stated that the important thing to remember is to concentrate on content quality rather than production methods.
(4) Google will improve; it is not flawless.
(5) The reason 404 Media is not ranked is that it is a new website and Google News requires some time to get to know it. However, Google will work to streamline this process so that new news sites can join the market more quickly—something we have been requesting for years.
(6) 404 Media offers its material through a paywall or subscription process; hence, it should employ the paywalled structured data to help Google comprehend and rank the content.
This is what Danny Sullivan shared now:
Jason To be clear, Google News isn't "boosting" AI content to appear higher up in search results in any way. It isn't like that. I can understand your frustration as well, as a new magazine like yours wants to show up in Google News as soon as possible. Yes, I do. I'm hoping we can get better at it. Further information about both is provided here.
Similar to Google Search, Google News indexes content from all across the internet. However, information may not score highly just because it is in our index. The screenshots of the allegedly improved AI content in today's report include
entail manually pushing our default ranking higher in the results by overriding it.
Instead of sorting results by relevancy, as is done with the screenshots, news-related items can also be shown using Google Search's News tab. By doing this, you are specifically requesting our systems to display the most recent items in descending order and to disregard their normal relevance ranking.
As we've previously stated, our priority is content quality over quantity when it comes to AI material. It is important to note that this does not imply that we are giving them carte blanche to produce a ton of subpar content. Not only is it against our policies to do so, but
Though this does not imply that our default ranking systems would never present inferior content—after all, no automated system is flawless. Additionally, we're constantly trying to make them better to guarantee the success of high-caliber, original content.
Regarding your content showing up in Google News, our systems may need some time to identify and surface information from new publications. The systems usually require a certain amount of time for news to be published over time. Having stated that, we'll try to figure out how to enhance the procedure more broadly in order to perform better.
To ensure we properly comprehend the work you're doing, I'd also advise your publication—or any pub—that has gated or paywalled content to grant us access to your crawler.
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