Suite101 kicked out of Google News - and admits to gaming the system

Photo by BeeThalin

Many content sites have been kicked out of Google News, but usually they pretend to be shocked and/or they accuse Google of picking on them without cause.  This is the first time, that I know of, that someone at one of the sites has admitted that they didn't really care about the news they were producing.

"We began indexing articles in Google News in April 2010 as a purely SEO-driven initiative: the goals at the time were less to give reporters a platform or audiences a publication as to nab greater search traffic. With an English-language market well equipped with serious news organizations, to even think about competing you really have to mean it. As a group, we never really did."  -- Michael Kedda, Editor-in-chief, Suite 101, in a memo posted internally in Suite 101 for the site's authors 

That's quite an admission.  Full memo after the jump:

"We have received confirmation from Google that our news articles are no longer being included in the Google news index. While we don't know exactly why, and do know for some writers this is a shame, we're taking it in stride. Slightly bad timing if anything.

"We began indexing articles in Google News in April 2010 as a purely SEO-driven initiative: the goals at the time were less to give reporters a platform or audiences a publication as to nab greater search traffic. With an English-language market well equipped with serious news organizations, to even think about competing you really have to mean it. As a group, we never really did.

"Looking forward, we know that news journalism, as a form we respect, does not factor into our plans for future—at least not as something we produce ourselves. It's an easy, calm decision, unfortunately just slightly tainted by the apparent snub.

"Just as well. Time to focus.

"You will note that the submission guidelines have been amended to remove the section on news. We will also be removing the "newsworthy" check box from the article draft page.

"You are still welcome to publish articles on timely events, however we will not designate those articles as "news" in the articles' URLs.

Thanks,
Michael"

(via the AC, um Yahoo Voice, forums)