A week or so ago, Google replaced the news box in the web search results with a box named In The News. The name change isn’t the big deal, the big deal is that more than just Google News approved sources show up in the box.

The “In The News” box shows CNN but also can show Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and random blogs. A human at Google doesn’t need to approve these “news” sources to show up in this box, like they would have to in the old box or over at Google News.

Google said:

But News publishers are not happy, mostly because they are losing out on valuable Google web search traffic to places like Reddit, Twitter and other non news sources.

A Google News Help thread has some complaints.

It is unclear if Google News publishers lost significant traffic from Google because of this change or not. But it is also not clear if searchers are happier with this change or not.

Google did respond to the complaints in the thread saying:

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

This post was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today. FYI, I am offline today, so if Google does a Penguin update – I won’t get to it until Monday.