Aside from a quick hit off the Drudge Report pipe, landing high in Google News is probably the coolest thing that can happen to your latest article or blog post at the newspaper.
Google knows how successful their news search is, and they recently decided to dive into newspaper archive search as well as current news search.
If I were running a newspaper, I think that I’d be asking myself a very important question: why does Google News work?
Convenience
I wouldn’t normally say something that falls so squarely in the “obvious” category as convenience and ease of use, but many things that seem obvious to me are not so obvious to many people who aren’t thinking web-native yet.
People use Google News because it’s a centralized, convenient way to get access to information about the topic they’re most interested in, regardless of its source.
It should be a big warning sign that the people searching on Google News don’t care about your masthead. Why should they? News is a commodity.
Truthiness
The big difference between Google News and regular Google is that Google News searches only approved news outlets.
That’s another “duh,” statement that has an important effect: when you search Google News you can be reasonably sure that you’re going to land on something trustworthy.
It is, essentially, a white list of trusted news sources, and the reader is assured a level of “truthiness” about the end result.
Now Google is certifying the legitimacy of your news outlet before people even get to your page. No wonder they don’t care about your masthead.
Now what?
OK, so now we know that people use Google News because it’s a good way to find news on just about anything, while remaining assured that the site you land on will belong to a legitimate news organization (whoever it is).
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
I think it’s a good thing. News is a commodity, opinion is not. Embrace news as a commodity - make it as findable as possible, and drive your brand with opinion pieces.
Lead people to your opinion sections from your hard news articles, so that you can capture readers who land on your site from Google News.
Make your site attractive and notable so that people will remember it and come back later.
Once you accept that news is a commodity and search can be your friend, it opens a whole new world of opportunities.
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Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry. 
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