Advertisement
  1. SEJ
  2.  ⋅ 
  3. SEO

Google News Boots Partner of Agence France Presse?

Google News Boots Partner of Agence France Presse?

Last week after a law suit was filed by the Agence France Presse against Google News for “illegally” indexing AFP’s images and content for distribution, Bob Hoffman has posted a rant on Search Engine Guide on how Google did not only delete AFP content from its index – but also that of sites syndicating AFP content. Hoffman defends Google News, as its practice is quite similar to other news syndication and indexing services like Topix.net and others. “Google has no ads on the news service and Google is just one of many news aggregators out there. What Google does is common practice on the web…” Hoffman writes.

Hoffman goes on to describe how his site, PoliticalGateway.com was also booted out of the Google News index, because the Political Gateway reprints AFP pieces. “No matter how you look at it, AFP will lose this battle. It is inherently just an attempt to extort money out of Google. What AFP does not realize is how badly they have damaged their clients. Political Gateway is one of their clients and we have been devastated.”

Hoffman adds on Search Engine Guide: Google decided to respond to the extortion and stupidity of the lawsuit by actually winning the battle. Google’s response? They stopped syndicating the news from sites using AFP of which this site is one. Not only is our AFP news not syndicated, but our editorials and independent news feeds are also blacklisted. Any news posted after Tuesday morning at 3am cannot be found on Google anywhere. It is a matter of time before the other services that ‘grab’ our news follow suit.

How does this effect Political Gateway? Hoffman explains:

What does this mean for our site? No news aggregation, no news syndication, no news on search engines, no readers can find us, no traffic. Add all this up and you can see the economic value of the site is gone.

Perhaps suing AFP would make up the difference.

At last check some of Political Gateway’s stories are now being indexed in Google News.

Category SEO
ADVERTISEMENT
SEJ STAFF Loren Baker Founder at Foundation Digital

Loren Baker is the Founder of SEJ, an Advisor at Alpha Brand Media and runs Foundation Digital, a digital marketing ...

Google News Boots Partner of Agence France Presse?

Subscribe To Our Newsletter.

Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.