I’ve previously written about how Google News was generating more than $100 million in revenue, according to a Google VP.

I’ve written about how Google’s Knol is becoming a competitor to media companies by becoming a content creator.

I’ve covered how Google News is trying to be a local aggregator of news (rather than your site being the aggregator).

I’ve pointed out how Google is circumventing news sites’ search features with their own searches.

And I haven’t even addressed how Google is gaining enormous control over the online advertising market, especially with Yahoo in the financial pits.

That 30+% of site traffic from search engines is nice, but are we really still arguing that Google isn’t a competitor to news and media sites?

-Keep the article body clean
Avoid strange tags, ads, sidebars, etc.

-Make sure article URLs are permanent and unique
Google News needs a fresh URL for each item and at least three digits that aren’t a year. Or, use News Sitemaps.

-Take advantage of stock tickers in Sitemaps
Use stock ticker symbols in content to get it tagged to the company.

-Check your encoding
Having a conflict with different encoding types can cause issues.

-Make your article publication dates explicit
Having no article date or an incorrect one can mess up your content’s placement in Google News..

-Keep original content separate from press releases
Don’t mix the two on news sections. If you do, make sure your site uses rel=”nofollow” for the links.

-Format your images properly
Use JPGs and make sure to place them near the headline for a chance at getting the thumbnail spot.

[Google News Blog: Eight Ways to Help Google News Better Crawl Your Site]

-View the Document: The 25-page lawsuit [PDF]
-View the Document:  Request for an injunction [PDF] to stop the Globe from posting GateHouse links. [UPDATE 12/23, 10:02 p.m.: A judge denied the temporary injunction]
-View the Document: 35-page support document for the injunction [PDF]
-View the Document: Affidavit by GateHouse Media Metro Editor-in-Chief Gregory Reibman [PDF]
-Your Town Newton, one of the Boston Globe’s community sites that sparked the lawsuit. See the news links in the center content gutter.

The lawsuit, if successful, could create a monumental chilling effect for bloggers, news sites, search engines, social media sites and aggregators such as Topix and Techmeme, which link to articles, display headlines and use snippets of copyrighted text from other sites. Initiatives such as the NYTimes.com Times Extra, which displays links to related articles from other sites, could be shut down for fear of copyright lawsuits. It could lead to a repudiation of one of the fundamental principles on which the Internet was built: the discovery and sharing of information.

In its complaint, GateHouse called the article links “deep links” because they do not link to the home page of the site. The “deep link” language in the complaint is meant to invoke cases such as the Supercrosslive.com case, wherein a motorcross news site was successfully prohibited from deep linking to a competing site’s streaming video file, which bypassed the site’s advertising.

From a technological standpoint, Your Town Newton’s article links would likely be considered deep links. However, that does not necessarily mean the links are a violation of fair use principles. The links to the articles, which contain as many as six advertisement positions, are rather different in nature from the links to streaming audio and media files in the Supercrosslive.com case, which were unable to contain advertising.

GateHouse’s assertion is that the Boston Globe community site’s use of the headlines cannibalizes GateHouse’s content and causes it financial harm because readers gather news from the links and snippets on the Globe’s site rather than visit GateHouse’s sites. Although not explicitly stated in the complaint, this means GateHouse likely believes the loss of readers from possible increased use of the Globe’s site will not be offset by the readers brought in by its competitor’s links.

If GateHouse were to have its way with its deep link argument, it would create a legal precedent that makes the act of linking to a copyrighted article illegal. It could mean a crippling of sites such as Romenesko and the Drudge Report, which can bring in enormous amounts of readers while being primarily built upon links to someone else’s expensive-to-create content. But, if enforced, it would also cut off the voluminous flow of readers who arrive to news sites via search engines and aggregators. That, too, has an effect on the bottom line.

In the end, we could see a long list of media companies flinging short-sighted lawsuits at each other, while suicidally pushing their content into black holes guarded by copyright law.

[UPDATE 12/23]: Here’s some commentary on the lawsuit from other media bloggers:

-How the GateHouse suit looks from both sides – Media Nation
-GateHouseGate – Mark Potts
-A danger to journalism – Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine
-Gatehouse sues NYTCo over aggregation: But do they have a point? – Tish Grier
-Aggregation aggravation – PaidContent
-Dying Newspapers Suing Each Other For Content Theft – Silicon Valley Insider

The “story” simply speculates on his death without offering any actual facts. Check out the use of “died,” “death,” “dead” and –yes– “no longer living” in the headline to goose search engine traffic.

Folks, don’t become desperate for page views and do bottom-of-the-barrel stuff like this.

(And no, I’m not linking to the story; there’s no way I’m lending any Google juice to that thing.)

Google has previously worked with the New York Times and Washington Post to digitize their archives. It has also worked with publishers to digitize and index massive amounts of books through Google Book Search.

With this new service, Google is capitalizing on the weakness of most newspaper sites’ archives and search functions, a move similar to when Google launched the automatic search box and navigation links that appear when searching the name of a popular web site (Ex. search “New York Times” and the first result will have a search box underneath, which bypasses the site’s own search with Google’s) . Older content on newspaper sites is notoriously difficult to find.

The newspaper industry’s slowness to create usable,  comprehensive and open archives is often the result of several factors:

-Skepticism that increased advertising revenue from open archives will be greater than the tangible revenue gained from paid archives.
-Being locked into existing contracts with archiving firms.
-Lack of desire to invest in a massive archive digitization effort.

If Google is successful in its endeavor, it will have created the most comprehensive archive of historical news content on earth. It also means that Google will venture even deeper into the media business by becoming a host for content that traditionally would have been found on individual news sites. The move highlights yet another way in which the shortcomings of news companies’ online efforts are bearing ripe fruit for tech-savvy aggregators and search engines.

[Hat tip to Etan Horowitz for the heads up.]

“It’s not all about the search engine itself. Google is happy to build popular products that don’t make any money on their own but tie users into a broader Google ecosystem.”

The Valleywag tech blog says this particular insight paves the way for media organizations to sue Google News for making use of third-party content. Valleywag says:

What neither Mayer nor Fortt explained: The real reason why Google doesn’t put ads on Google News. That’s because it fears lawsuits from the media organizations whose headlines and text it picks up and republishes. (It’s already lost a court case brought by a newspaper group in Belgium). By not running ads on Google News, Google lawyers could argue it’s not profiting from their work.

Journo blogger Lucas Grindley (hat tip to him for the link) says this revelation is yet another reason why Google is indeed directly competing with media organizations. Grindley writes, “As profits shrink and newspapers look for a scapegoat, someone is going to sue that woman.”

I made a similar argument last week when I called Google’s new Knol site a “direct challenge to media companies” (though I did stress that blaming Google for the news industry’s woes is a red herring). As Google grows its plethora of offerings, it is increasingly getting into the content business.

Google already has an enormous share of the online advertising market through it’s AdWords program, which finds the advertisers and provides a platform on which to serve the ads. Now, Google is increasingly attempting to gain a bigger piece of the inventory on which the advertising is displayed. That means launching additional sites that lead to searches with paid advertising, circumventing news sites’ own search features (another search with paid advertising) and hosting original content on their own servers (AP stories, Knol).

So if you aren’t already, start worrying about your event listings, restaurant reviews, comment boards, public records data and any other number of searchable things of which your news organization makes use. Google probably won’t be far behind.

In a June 2006 interview with the LA Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked whether Google is a media company or a technology company. His response:

“It’s better to think of Google as a technology company. Google is run by three computer scientists, and Google is an innovator in technology in our space. We’re in the advertising business – 99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn’t make us a media company. We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster.“

If today’s launch of Google’s Knol is any indication, this line of thinking has fundamentally changed. Google, in short, is becoming a full-fledged media company in direct competition with established news and knowledge sites.

Knol –short for “knowledge– is Google’s new Wikipedia-esque site that hosts authoritative articles on a wide variety of subjects. Knol recruits contributors to write articles on subjects such as medical conditions, sports and more. Article authors earn money by running AdSense campaigns on their content. Knol also offers a suite of collaboration tools that allows other users to suggest changes to the original article.

This move is a fundamental shift from Google’s traditional directive of helping users find content, as opposed to creating and hosting the content. It is a shift that has continued as Google acquired Blogger, launched Google Page Creator, allowed users to publish documents with Google Docs and began hosting Associated Press articles and user commentary on its Google News service (as opposed to linking to AP affiliates’ stories and leaving comments to the news sites).

However, Google also brings an enormous amount of traffic to news sites — traffic that means big advertising dollars. Most media companies worth their salt have significant search engine optimization efforts in place to make sure those who seek information are likely to find it on a news site. It’s for that reason that news organizations’ view of Google approaches the realm of bipolar disorder. News sites beg for the Google traffic but are also being encroached upon by Google features, such as Knol and new search boxes that let users bypass news sites’ own search features (which does help people actually find stuff for a change).

The Guardian’s Jack Schofield summarizes it well when he writes that “Knol represents an attack on the media industry in general.” TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington believes that Knol may be “a step too far.” Search engine expert and author Danny Sullivan also agrees, saying that:

“[Google's] Search, Ads, & Apps mantra that CEO Eric Schmidt has repeated on several occasions underscores that offering content tools is fair game within its mission. But does hosting content turn it into a competitor with other content providers and set up an unfair advantage in gaining traffic that might otherwise flow to them?”

Knol also represents a potential conflict of interest in Google’s own search results. If Knol articles are meant to be “authoritative articles about specific topics,” those familiar with search engine optimization will see the red flag. Google’s incentive to make Knol articles the most authoritative on the Internet puts it in direct competition with topic-specific columnists, news stories on a plethora of subjects and web sites such as About.com and Wikipedia. Because Google itself creates the algorithms that define what is “authoritative,” Google would have an unfair advantage over other sites — even if it is simply in terms of using in-house knowledge as opposed to somehow altering the actual ranking algorithms.

Nevertheless, BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis has made the point that it is unproductive to argue whether Google is a friend or foe. He is correct in that we should try to emulate Google, rather than become disgruntled and blame the news industry’s woes on the search giant. Google’s endeavors at hosting and creating content doesn’t mean news sites can’t continue the symbiotic relationship with search engines.

But make no mistake; Google isn’t becoming a direct competitor to traditional news and media sites. It already is.

For those not in the know, ComScore and Nielsen use panels of users to determine the audience of news sites.  If you’ve ever compared ComScore or Nielsen numbers to your in-house server log data, you’ll know those numbers often differ significantly, which can be frustrating for content producers. However, Google’s numbers would be backed up by the immense amount of Internet traffic data that’s stored on its servers, hopefully making it more accurate (although there will always be difficulties with tracking unique visitors by cookies, IP address, etc.). Best of all, Google is offering its data free to marketers. From the WSJ:

Google’s approach, aimed at bolstering its ad-sales business, could pose a major threat to the Web measurement services that are available now, ad executives say. The two main players in the business — comScore and Nielsen Online — gather data on Internet use largely by tracking what panels of people do online or by conducting surveys, and their results can be inconsistent and incomplete. Google’s new offering will be based mostly on data from Web servers, allowing for a deeper and broader view of Internet use. And unlike the services from comScore and Nielsen, Google’s will be offered to marketers free, according to ad executives.

[Wall Street Journal - Google to Offer a Tool to Measure Web Hits]

If you’re at a major newspaper site, you[‘re probably already included. However, when you go to launch a new editorial product, you’re going to want to do your best to be included in Google News.

You have to specifically ask to be in the index. After that, there are four key factors considered in Google’s decision, Niles says:

Want to know more? Get the full details over at Online Journalism Review.

Does Google News care that you’ve updated your story? Does AdSense improve your article’s ranking? How does having a site map affect your rankings?

Well, don’t look at ME. Go to the Google News Blog to find out.

From the Times story:

The results of the search are almost all individual company pages. Google tops those results with a link to the home page of the Web site in question, adds another search box, and offers users the chance to let Google search for certain things within that site.

The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.

Could this cause a drop in page views from users searching on Google rather than on your news site? On the flipside, will it ultimately drive more traffic by letting users find your site’s content easier? And what about the ad revenue Google will pull in from this?

Friends, keep an eye on your internal site search numbers as this develops.

[Hat tip to Roger Simmons]

Being a bit of an SEO geek, I can attest that this is one of the best resources (balanced with length) on blogs and search engines. This may fall under the “obvious” category, but it bears emphasizing: If you’re working on a news site, you absolutely must understand the fundamentals of how search engine optimization works.

A few quick, blog-specific SEO pointers and tidbits that come to mind:

-Don’t be bashful about submitting your blog to aggregators and directories. Blogs usually have built-in pinging mechanisms that spread your blog posts all over the world (really neat interactive graphic here). Because of this, blogs have an advantage over many of the static news site pages out there.

-Avoid starting your blog on a free out-of-the-box hosted service such as Blogger, WordPress.com (not the same as a WordPress install on your own server) . It may cost you a few bucks a month and some initial work to host it yourself, but when the day comes that you want to move your blog to a better domain, you won’t find yourself painfully stuck. You’ll also have way more flexibility to tweak your site.

-Do your best to build relationships with other bloggers and drop comments on their blogs. Respond to your comments. The more that active bloggers check out your blog, the more inbound links you’re likely to receive.

-Follow the Google News Blog. This will keep you informed of important changes to how Google News picks up your content (this is mostly just for mainstream media blogs).

-It usually comes down to a beautifully keyworded headline. Don’t you forget it!

[Blogger's Guide to SEO]