Google Gives Playfuls Timeout

A Google spokesperson commented on the issue saying," To ensure a high quality service for our end users, we periodically review our index of news sources, particularly following user complaints, and have recently removed some sources that do not meet our criteria as news organizations, including Playfuls.com."

Before Google took action,Playfuls had 5-10 stories a day on the front page of Google News,and news aggregator Texyt says the site was ranked as high as 16th for Google News English language sources. It was on April 26 that Google apparently tweaked its news algorithm,removing Playfuls from its high ranking.

Since then the site has had a major decrease in traffic. At one time they were among the top 5,000 most visited Web sites, but according to Alexa they have fallen off the radar and are below 40,000.

Google News plays a large role in providing traffic for news organizations. News sites receive between 1.18 and 2 percent of their traffic via Google News according to LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise.

As for the requirements for appearing on Google News, Google offered the following explanations and guidelines:

Regarding source inclusion, we use a set of guiding principles to help determine which sites qualify as news organizations. Google strives to be as inclusive as possible, without regard to political viewpoint or ideology, while also providing a high quality experience for our users. Some of the things we look for when evaluating news organizations include: 

The source offers information that is updated regularly

It is managed by an organization (not an individual) and includes organizational information on its site

The source does not include hate speech or pornography

The source does not allow open posting of content without editorial review

The source’s website is technically conducive to inclusion