Selling my soul for the Google News love
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Oyster, Google News, Brooker, Google on
I was sent a great link to a great column by Charlie Brooker yesterday.
And sadly - I felt myself nodding in agreement to much that he wrote.
As a two year old website, we are very reliant on Google News as we know it is a launching pad for stories to get hits and find readers who wouldn’t normally come to our site by themselves.
Today’s an example - I wrote a follow up story to the Dutch Oyster Hack, with news that it was going to be revealed to the public.
Now the thing about online journalism is that it doesn’t pay to be the first to have it. It’s a complete opposite to newspaper journalism where the first to have the story out wins.
No, now you have to get it Googled and be picked up on Google News. If you notice my story and the first paragraph, I have links to all the main websites (London underground, Oyster etc) - I’ve written it short and concise and also dotted around some words which I know the bots would pick up.
I also put ‘free travel’ in the headline because its the sort of thing Google picks up.
Yes its very cynical.
But that’s online journalism. Or journalism in itself. Its not necessarily what you have in there, but sometimes just the way you present it. (Although I put some good stuff in there, as well as a statement from NXP which many of the sites didn’t get hold of - I’m hoping the Google bots take that into account.)
The thing is - it worked, and is one of the most popular stories today.
However unlike Charlie, I understand it perfectly because this is the way I was trained… Rather than having to change my way of thinking I’ve been brought up with doing things this way.
But that’s Google. Its dominance means there’s not much point fighting against it. And its no great secret anything I’ve said.
But how come I feel a bit dirty for attracting the Google love?
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