Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, responded to the article from 404 Media titled Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles. In short, Sullivan said that the way they filtered Google News was by date and not relevancy (relevancy filtering is the default) and that Google can always do better.
First go read the article, note, there is a subscription paywall to read it.
Then here is Danny Sullivan’s response, which he posted on X, Mastodon and on Bluesky:
Let me summarize before I quote:
(1) Google News is not boosting AI content
(2) The examples in the article show that the author used filters and special searches to showcase the AI content above the default settings in Google News.
(3) He said focus on quality, it is not about how it is produced but if the content is quality or not.
(4) Google is not perfect, Google will do better.
(5) Why 404 Media doesn’t rank is because it is a new site and Google News needs time to trust it but Google will look for ways to improve this process for new news sites entering the market (we’ve been asking for this for years).
(6) 404 Media uses a paywall or subscription process for its content and thus should use the paywalled structured data so Google can understand the content and rank it.
Now here is what Danny Sullivan posted:
