Google is changing the way it curates information around breaking news events with the development of a new search feature called “Big Moments.”
The project began after Google employees felt that there were flaws in their curation of current events stories .
Google is betting that by contextualizing news, it can make the world a better place. The company wants to be people’s one-stop source for all things happening in journalism and beyond; whether you need information about something that happened yesterday or details on an event happening right now Google will provide historical context when possible with coverage spanning events from last year up until today.
The Key Difference
Google has been making a move towards becoming the go-to platform for news consumption. They have partnered with data repositories such as Data Commons, which gathers information from US government agencies and is hosted by Google in order to bring more editorial decisions into their content creation process – much like what publications do every day!
The key difference is that decisions will be made by algorithms, while editorial decisions for news publications are made by humans. This can end up being particularly challenging when it comes to maintaining an impartial stance and covering polarizing events like politics or sports in real-time because information about these topics is notoriously difficult (and increasingly so) – but Google seems ready to curate trending stories from across the globe as well!
The AI Role
Google News is currently handled by algorithms, AI and machine learning. For Big Moments though they will have to make editorial decisions that determine what constitutes a “Big Moment” worth covering which can be done either algorithmically or based on user signals.
The data showed 40 percent of respondents said they were most concerned about false information on social media in comparison to just 10% who are worried about getting their news from Google search.
Google is set to provide the most accurate information on what’s happening in real time
The Impact Over SEO
The impact of big moments can be prominent locally as well. This could mean that Google will display results on page 1 differently, and new local listings might take over the top spots for certain keywords or topics you’re researching.
In the future, it is likely that various news websites will gain a constant stream of fresh content from verified sources and special Google features such as Top Stories. This type of information could be aggregated onto social media trending posts or tweets by verified profiles for those who want to see what’s going on in real time.
Can expanding your site with niche relevant news sections be a great opportunity to gain more traffic? We believe that having content published on Google News and/or being accepted into the “Google Big Moments” network locally can be an answer.
The Opportunity
Here are 3 tips if you are considering optimizing your website for local news.
Build evergreen content: One of the most important things to remember when creating content is that it should be evergreen. Evergreener refers to any type or form of information which can remain relevant for an extended period of time without losing its effectiveness in order to attract new audiences and/or keep current followers interested enough.
Get your content included in Google News: To be included in Google News, your site must follow their content guidelines and technical standards. Most news sites are up-to-date on these requirements so they can easily check if you have followed all of the necessary steps before submitting for approval. You should expect to wait 3 weeks from the date that Google receives applications after applying; Industry authoritativeness, keyword optimization, uniqueness and social shares will help you rank better on Google News.
Optimization is paramount: Staying on top of your site architecture is essential in terms of keeping the navigability and crawlability for readers. If you’re looking to improve this experience, add pagination at bottom with as few clicks possible. In addition:
- To ensure that Googlebot is always crawling your content, make sure you’re updating the news sitemap with fresh articles as they’re published.
- Avoid duplicate content and block unwanted pages with robots.txt or meta to ensure optimal crawl speed and budget.
- Audit the top browser and most popular devices leading traffic to your site, be sure that it loads correctly with high readability and font size. Add a share function for each piece of content on the page in order to gain extra referral traffic.
The Bottom Line
Google has been evolving its plan to keep users online without leaving the SERP, and we believe that new Google tools are coming alive. The “big moments” feature will also be prominent in local SEO – so this is a great opportunity for you to take advantage of content publishing opportunities on sites where people routinely highly engage with local news sites. Keep your eyes peeled if there’s something interesting happening near you 🙂
Happy Crush!
SEO Lover, my motto is Action Over Words.
