I was looking for some specific eye surgery related news content in Google but I was shocked to see how bad the quality of the Google News results were. PR Web Press releases hold 4 positions which shows the platform still holds a fair bit of authority as a trusted provider for Google News. It’s good that Google is more clearly displaying these results are a (press release) but the diversity of sources and therefore the quality of “Lasik” news is terrible.
The basis of this post is the dominance of self-promotional PR items in Google News on the first page of results. While there is a strange Japan Times post on some legal issues linked to issues with Lasik surgery and recognition of misleading ads, the other item on the Deccan Herald appears to be more of a blog posts than a actual news piece.
The upside for PR Web and to some degree the other channels is that it does reinforce the value of it’s paid syndication channel for getting your article shown in Google news. So if the diversity of Google News sources could be fine-tuned it would make for a much better Google News result as The Braverman Eye Center has the same PR item shown twice on two different syndication channels.
What do you think? PR spam or quality Google News results?