Google News Badges Spell the End for Junk Content Writers

Haven’t you ever questioned the authority of a Blogger, Tweeter or an independent analyst on certain topics and have wanted to verify if a news source authentic?  In previous generations, most news and content was produced by publications, publishers, newspapers and media companies that chose and assigned qualified reporters and researchers to write and report on specific topics. Publications and media sources in these kinds of organizations were and keep on being incentivized to preserve highly qualified reporting staffs since one of their main assets is their loyal readership and/or viewer group. As a consequence, a majority of the content produced by these organizations is trustworthy.

On the other hand, in in the current market, independent reporting mediums like Blogging, Tweeting and independent publishing are growing extremely popular and turning into alternate sources of news and content that quite a few individuals depend on for everyday news coverage and thought leadership. These unbiased news and content sources do not have rigid rules in writer or reporter selection and publishing processes unlike traditional media and publishing houses. In fact, writers and thought leaders in using these mediums oftentimes opt to voluntarily turn themselves into content writers or independent news reporters on on any particular topic and assume control of their own publishing processes. As a result, there is hardly ever an institutional credential filtering system to control who reports or writes on a given subject matter.

This burden now resides with the readers who can opt to go through content from these platforms. Readers normally will rely on Google Page Ranks or B2B Social Media Recommendations (Tweets, LinkedIn Shares, Facebook Likes, or Google +1s) from trusted sources to assess the believability of content. On the other hand, this sorting out process doesn’t really pinpoint bad content, it only goes on alert for popular content, which means poor content often slips through the cracks and gets to readers.  This can result in all kinds of phony rumors than can be personally or financially damaging.   Google has attempted to clear up this dilemma with the new News Badge feature that it introduced to Google last month and is gradually integrating this feature into its Google+ social media platform.

The Google Badge permits Google News readers to acquire private, shareable news badges that present how well they comply with a given subject matter in the news. These badges can be shared with all of their followers on Google+ and users can also market them in other social media market places and blogs to set up believability on a subject matter.  Although Google’s news aggregator only delivers a fraction of the overall news that is read, it does have a large enough market share to point out what a reader knows most about.  Google is most likely just making an attempt to check the receptiveness of the public with this concept and if it gains mass popularity, Google may roll-out a badge system that covers all kinds of Google Searches.  If Google did so, this would mean a much more robust measurement of credibility and could turn into a key game changer in the influence marketing space.  It is possible that Google could even roll this information into its search algorithm and weight Google +1s by the credibility of the person recommending the information.

As with any brand new technology feature, only time will tell how vital Google News Badges will grow to be in influencer marketing and search rankings.  However, one thing that is clear is that people who adopt the Google News Badges system earlier will be rewarded with a first-mover advantage in getting these badges.  Thus, it is worthwhile to position yourself to take advantage of these prospective changes in the market place just before they happen.

Related articles

• Google News Badges? We Don’t Need No Stinking Google News Badges (techcrunch.com)
• Google Launches News Badges (tech.slashdot.org)

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