Running a blog network with 150 sites has its peaks and valleys. One of the things you constantly struggle with is how to promote your writers and get their work in front of as many people as possible. There are a myriad of ways to help get new posts out there like Twitter, Facebook, BallHype, and our Bloguin.com portal, to name a few. However, one of the most difficult promotional tools to get our blogs involved with is Google News.
Google News prides itself on being different than your typical search engine results, in that it returns relevant news results for your searches. If you typed “lebron james” into the regular Google search, the first thing that would be returned is likely his Wikipedia page. That’s all well and good if you want to know about King James’ background or stats, but completely worthless if you want to find out what’s happening right now with his pending free-agency decision. Here’s where Google News steps in. Supposedly, if you type “lebron james” into Google News, you’d get a list of up-to-the-minute news stories from legitimate sources. The problem is, when you actually do type in “lebron james”, you, instead, get this…
Breaking News: LeBron James Signs with the Minnesota Vikings
It’s pretty frustrating when you see good blogger after good blogger on our network get rejected by Google News, yet any Bleacher Report writer, regardless of his reputation or tenure with the company, gets blanket approval to have his work featured prominently in the results. I’m not ragging on Bleacher Report, per se, as there are plenty of good writers on the site who produce quality articles. However, by nature, the Bleacher Report is structured so that anyone can sign up for an account and start posting. By that logic, anyone can also get their work featured on Google News, regardless of its validity or quality. Some may claim that allowing that level of unbridled access is “irresponsible” as it taints what’s supposed to be “trustworthy” news. My take is that it’s just plain stupid for Google to allow unfiltered Bleacher Report content into their results, because if I search for “lebron james” in Google News and see results like the one above, I’m frankly going to be doing my searching elsewhere.
And just an FYI, TWolves Blog is included in Google News, so it’s not sour grapes from this site.
Here’s some other takes on BR/Google News from some of our Bloguin bloggers:
Brett Solesky at Midway Illustrated
Don Landrigan at With Malice…
Not much else going on with the Wolves at the moment, but ESPN.com did break this tidbit…
Carmelo Anthony will be a member of the Denver Nuggets next season — whether he accepts the team’s offer of a contract extension or not.
With speculation that Denver may trade their All-Star forward growing over the past week, a high-ranking Nuggets official said the club has no intentions of moving its best player.
“There is no way we are trading Carmelo Anthony,” the official said. “We’re 100 percent certain of that.”
Can’t say I’m shocked by that news. Unless somebody made Denver a Godfather offer, they’d be stupid to deal Anthony before next season’s trade deadline. There’s always the chance his supposed ill-will towards Denver could fade as the season progresses and they are offering him significantly more money then he’d be able to make anywhere else. You simply don’t trade a player of his caliber unless you absolutely have no other choice.
Looks like our dreams of Melo have been shattered. So who do Wolves fans turn to next? A sign-and-trade deal with Toronto for Chris Bosh? Gulp… David Lee?
So that’s all the “news” I was able to scrounge up at the moment. Thanks Google… If stuff breaks throughout the day, I’ll do some updates.