Ryan Tate at Valleywag writes, "The Times’ longtime online chief, Martin Niesenholtz, recently whined that a Google search on the word ‘Gaza’ didn’t include any of his content on the first results page. And yet he just nuked 121,000 of his own articles containing that keyword."

Original article: Big-brand publishers don’t like being overshadowed by bloggers. What else is new?

A new AdAge article discusses a group of such publishers (including brands like the Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and the New York Times) which make up Google’s Publishing Advisory Board, which is calling for Google to rank their content higher because they’re "the original sources" of news stories. Of course we all know that while that may often be the case, it is also very often not. Somtimes even "original sources" even come from Microblogging. Remember when the news of the emergency landing on the  Hudson River broke on Twitter?

This is not a new discussion. As Steve Rubel says, when he read the article he felt like he had stepped back into 2004.

The truth of the matter is, many big brand publishers have become more blog-like and many bloggers and blog-style news sites have become big brands themselves. Rubel phrases it well, "To me, we don’t have zebras and elephants anymore. They have mated and we’re all one species."

But that’s not how some of these publishers see it. They’d rather get special treatment based on their own brand rather than putting forth the effort in search engine optimization that others would when they weren’t ranking to their satisfaction. Matt McGee (who has also joined this particular discussion) recently looked at a study showing that the Fortune 500 is still "largely invisible" in natural search results.

So where does Google stand? A recent update did supposedly cater to bigger brands anyway. "There’s absolutely value to original content," AdAge quotes a Google Spokesperson. "There’s value to derivative content, too. We look at this in many ways from the point of view of the user. But the truth is there are so many shades of gray even within, quote, original content."

The big-brand publishers are awaiting a more concrete answer from Google. The council meets again on April 30. With so much gray, that answer is probably going to be hard to reach.

Where do you stand on this subject? Talk about it with WPN readers.

How do you gauge the validity of health information in search results? How do you find out what the standard of care is for your particular ailment? In a recent blog post, Google VP Adam Bosworth attempts to tackle these questions and more concerning health-related search – a vertical that finds itself in great demand from searchers these days.

Google already has methods for labeling reliable health-related links within its search results, but as Bosworth writes, the process isn’t really doing all that much to help searchers:

Unfortunately, many of you either don’t notice these words when you’re searching about health questions at Google or have no idea what they mean. Clearly, we can do better at making this kind of labeling noticeable and your ideas on how we could make it clear to you that a site is medically reliable or trustworthy would be greatly appreciated as we think this through.

As the need for relevant and specific health-related search results continues to rise, vertically based engines/portals like Healthline are springing up in an attempt to provider users with accurate and up-to-date information.

Google touts itself as the ultimate repository for all of the Internet’s information. As search has evolved, however, users are less concerned with the quantity of information at their disposal than retrieving as much relevant information about a singular topic or niche as possible, which is the reason that the inception of vertical search engines has become prevalent as of late.

As Bosworth notes here, Google is starting to recognize that it’s the delivery and presentation of information that matters most: 

At the end of the day, all these questions are about how you find the information you need. They are deceptively simple. If they were about restaurants, they would be trivial. But they are actually matters of life and death in the extreme and quality of life in the common case. In short, they matter profoundly.

This overture from Google leaves more questions and little answers, but at least invites community participation in the conversation.

Paid Content‘s Rafat Ali got the scoop late last night that Steib, who launched NBC’s online video unit, NBBC, earlier this fall, would join Google to “work with advertisers to create effective, measurable video advertising.”

Steib has no official title, or official position yet, but it is assumed he’ll be working under Google’s advertising sales vice president.

Google has a history of snatching up the brightest talent around. In 2005, Google grabbed search guru Kai-Fu Lee from Microsoft and made him the head of Google China.

Yahoo and other companies have complained in the past that Google also drains all of the hottest talent from the universities as well.

Because Google has this history of swallowing up US talent, other search engines have had to look overseas to find comparable abilities.

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