How to Get Added to Google News

To be included in Google News, your articles (and their URLs) must be:

1. Unique

Each web page/blog post that display an article’s full text must have a unique URL. Google doesn’t include sites in its News that display multiple articles under one URL or that do not have links to pages dedicated solely to each article.

2. Permanent

Google can’t/won’t crawl pages (e.g. www.yoursite.com/news.html) if it displays a different story every day.  Make each post unique and permanent.
‘To ensure its links to articles function properly, each article on a news site must be associated with one unique URL, and that URL must be permanent (i.e., it can’t be recycled).’

3. Three-digit number

The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits.

For example:

Google News can’t crawl this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article23.html

Google News can crawl this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article234.html

Add three unique numbers to each article.

Note: if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as:

http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html

…Google won’t be able to crawl it.

Exception: this rule is waived with News sitemaps

http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68323

Google News: How to Recommend a site for inclusion

If you’d like a site to be included in Google News, send them the URL here.

http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40249

Recap: Get Added to Google News

Be

1. Unique
2. Permanent
3. Three-digit numbers

That’s it. Over to you.

Have you managed to get your blog indexed by Google for its news section? Was Bing easier? Share any tips you have below.

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How To Turn Off Google Buzz

1. Scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail page.
2. Find the ‘turn off buzz‘ link
3. Click on it.

This turns off Google Buzz.

How to filter Buzz

You can also filter email alerts from Buzz.

1. In Gmail, click Settings.
2. Click Filters
3. Select ‘Create a new filter‘
4. Enter label:buzz in the Has the Words field

How to filter friends with Buzz

To restrict Google Buzz updates to your close friends, change their setting to ‘Private‘.

Know any other Google Buzz tips?

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Last week I showed you how to use Google’s Advanced search features. This lets you drill-down and laser focus your search. Today, we’ll look at Google’s Wonder Wheel. How does it work? It displays a visual wheel of results, with related search items on each spoke. It’s more than a fancy trick. Keep working with it and you’ll see how powerful it can be.

Tip – make Google’s advanced search page your default. It’s worth the small effort.

How to use Google’s Wonder Wheel

1. Enter your keyword into Google to start the search.

2. Click Show Options (top left of nav bar). This expands the nav bar down the left side of the screen.

3. Click Wonder Wheel under Standard View. This creates a starfish-shaped circle with spokes to the related searches.

4. Click on the spokes (i.e. associated searches) to find more relevant key words and phrases.

You can click on the spokes to research different topics or return to the wonder wheel.

How ProBlogger uses Google’s Wonder Wheel

Darren Rowse’s video, “How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to Find Topics to Write about” shows how he uses the Wonder Wheel for idea generation. For example, to see what queries people enter into Google that he may not have thought of or to catch up with new trends. This helps focus your writing so that your content is aligned with what people are searching for. Make sense? http://www.problogger.net

FYI – Darren Rowse’s blog is compulsive reading if you plan to make a living online.

Does Google’s Wonder Wheel Really Work?

Does this help you find the search item you were after or is the regular way better? I use it when I get writer’s block and want to look at things from a fresh perspective.

At first, I found it gimmicky. But, the more I use it, the more ideas it creates. The trick is see where it can help and avoid deviating into topics that are not on your radar.

How about you? What do you think?

PS – You can learn How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential here. An excellent introduction to mind mapping techniques.

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One of my younger cousins has started her degree in university in Limerick, Ireland. Not the place most of us think of as the heart of technical writing. But, for Microsoft, Google and IBM this university has provides a conveyor belt, producing freshly minted technical writers every four years. It’s one of the few universities in Europe with a specialist degree in Technical Communications.

But, here’s the problem.

Ireland Plc is dead. So, is most of Europe.

Students taking a degree in technical writing / tech comms now read about layouts in the IT industry most every week. Actually, you don’t notice it any more.

The recession has become background noise.

Once they graduate, they’ll have to:

• Leave for the US to find work – is this smart?
• Up-skill and go for a Masters — makes sense but expensive and no guarantee of employment
• Move sideways into another field — possible but defeats the purpose of taking the degree in the first place
• Move to India or Asia — setup a technical writing firm there and/or work as a liaison between the US and Asian offices.
• Dropout?

This is what’s happening now. Why study for 4 years when there is no end goal?

I think this is a mistake, but it’s easy for me to say. Their careers are already at a premature crossroads.

Next week, I’m back in Ireland.

What advice would you suggest I give these students?

Stay the course or find something else?

PS - The University of Limerick courses are listed here.

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Put the Author’s name above a headline to get more clicks

Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer at The Huffington Post, said Huffington Post editors have found that “placing the author’s name above a headline almost always leads to more clicks than omitting it.”

Also, The Huffington Post’s new social media editor, Josh Young, has also been soliciting better headlines from readers on Twitter. Interesting use of Crowd-sourcing?

Takeaway

The Huffington Post is considering separate East Coast and West Coast editions.

Why?

Take the Oscars, It’s old news to East Coast readers by noon, but fresh for the West Coasters logging on.

Read more here: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/how-the-huffington-post-uses-real-time-testing-to-write-better-headlines/

Will real-time rating lead to “better” headlines or more popular ones?

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Does writing a blog constitute work? Forbes reports that the New York State Department of Labor recently declared a laid-off attorney ineligible for unemployment benefits as she was bringing in $1.30 a day from blog ads.

In April, Karin started a blog, called STL Meal Deals, where she wrote about local restaurant promotions. Since she received no payments from the businesses she mentioned, Karin decided to try generating some income by signing up for Google AdSense.

Google sends bloggers checks when their earnings hit $100–a level that took Karin three months to achieve.

Here’s what happened when the first check arrived:

Lawyer’s Unemployment Benefits Yanked Over $1 a Day From Blog http://www.forbes.com

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Turn Google Docs into a Writing Tool

Follow these steps:

1: Create a new document in Google Docs and choose “Edit CSS” from the edit menu.

2: Paste the following code into the CSS Box and save.

body {

font: 16px “Courier New”;

color: #00ff00 !important;

background: #000 !important;

width: 800px;

margin: 10px auto;

}

3: Press Ctrl + Shift + F to remove the menu bar in Google Docs and then hit F11 to turn your browser into full-screen mode.

Read more at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-docs-for-distraction-free-writing/10538/

Free Google Docs writing template

You can get a nice writing template over here from the same team: http://docs.google.com/

Do you use Google Docs for writing your tech documents?

What’s the one thing that would make you give up using Microsoft Word?

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For example:

1. Apple enjoys an unfettered supply of leading edge technology because its software, design, marketing, and retail prowess give it ultimate control over customer spending.

2. Amazon, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, AT&T, and Qualcomm have used their investments in software, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property to do the same.

3. All use their market power to force upstream vendors to invest for them to make the inputs to downstream innovations and transformations cheaper and more plentiful.

4. As long as they innovate sufficiently to follow the flow of market value downstream, all are able to limit the eventual return and market power accruing to these upstream innovations.

However, he warns that this model breaks down “where U.S. companies and innovators do not naturally control downstream demand. Take batteries for electric vehicles. The U.S. has ceded both innovation in the critical building block (the battery) as well as leadership in the integration of these blocks into downstream value (competitive automobiles).”

Full article here: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.com

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My shared Google Reader is here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/ivanawalsh

I’ve also made an aim to share no more than 5 links, sites, blogs per day. This should help avoid info overload for those who subscribe and increase the quality of the material.

Why am I doing this?

Louis Gray explains it much better than I ever could.

When I hit “share” in Google Reader, a few things happen.

   1. The item is added to my shared link blog.

   2. The item is available for comments within Google Reader for approved contacts.

   3. The items are shared on my FriendFeed, Facebook and Social media.

Louis Gray: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LouisgraycomLive/~3/Sx0m6McdWY0/why-and-where-we-share-distributing.html

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