Google News adds ‘blog’ labels, but not for many newspapers: I noticed a few weeks ago that search results in Google News for our neighborhood news sites — like MyBallard.com above — now include a “blog” label. Nieman Journalism Lab did a little investigating on its own and found the use of the label is inconsistent. For example, most newspaper blogs — despite being called blogs — are not labeled as such in search results. “It’s hard not to wonder if Google sees this as a gesture to newspaper publishers who have occasionally complained that their content isn’t privileged over blogs,” Nieman Lab blogger Zachary Seward wrote.

According to Google, they added the label “after receiving feedback from some Google News users who told us they’d like to know whether a listed story is a blog item before they click on it to visit the publisher’s website.” But if you ask me, attempting to define what’s a blog and what isn’t is dangerous territory. I don’t mind being called a blog from time — we call ourselves a blog occasionally, too — but when Google distinguishes between independent blogs and established media blogs, then that’s a problem. And for some people (maybe not for you, but for many news consumers) the word “blog” carries enough negative connotation in the context of news to potentially devalue our search results. Just look at Google’s explanation.

Last year, Google initially refused to include My Ballard — which just won a national Online Journalism Award, by the way — into its Google News index. We pressed the issue and they changed their minds, adding our other Next Door Media sites as well, to which we are grateful. Now we hope they reconsider the blog label, or at the very least, make it fair.