Google News Blog: November 2010

News Blog

The official blog from the team at Google News

Credit where credit is due

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Posted by Eric Weigle, Software Engineer, and Abe Epton, Publisher Technical Specialistsyndication-sourceoriginal-source

syndication-source indicates the preferred URL for a syndicated article. If two versions of an article are exactly the same, or only very slightly modified, we're asking publishers to use syndication-source to point us to the one they would like Google News to use. For example, if Publisher X syndicates stories to Publisher Y, both should put the following metatag on those articles:
<meta name="syndication-source" content="http://www.publisherX.com/wire_story_1.html">

original-source indicates the URL of the first article to report on a story. We encourage publishers to use this metatag to give credit to the source that broke the story. We recognize that this can sometimes be tough to determine. But the intent of this tag is to reward hard work and journalistic enterprise. For example, to credit the publication that broke a story you could use a metatag like this:

<meta name="original-source" content="http://www.example.com/burglary_at_watergate.html">

original-sourceHelp Center article
Update 2/11/11:syndication-sourcerel=canonicalrel=canonicalsyndication-sourcerel=canonicalsyndication-sourcesyndication-source