A puzzle, and a cause for concern

Last week, I referenced the Wall Street Journal article titled "You Graduated Cum Laude, So Did Everyone Else," published on July 2nd.

When I wrote up the blog post, it was July 4th, two days later.

I couldn't find the article on Google News. Even when I input the entire title of the article, Google News still came up empty. Here is the screen shot:

It found irrelevant articles from WSJ, some from months ago but it did not retrieve the most recent relevant article - even when I wrote the entire title of the article!

I also tried other queries like "wsj melissa korn" (author of the article) but obstinately,this one article just refuses to come to the surface.

The problem is specific to the algorithm behind Google News. When I tried the exact same query on Google's search engine, the first result coming back is the correct one:

 

Next, I experimented on Bing. Both Bing News and Bing Search return the expected result.

***

The puzzle: what is confusing Google News? how did the algorithm miss the most obvious result?

The cause for concern: the algorithm behind Google News (and other news sites) controls what we see and what we don't see. We have essentially zero information about why the algorithm selects what specific articles for us.

Comment below if you have thoughts about this.

 

Comments

[Cristopher]

Speculating:
The Google algorithm didn't classify the article as news and thus excluded it from the search (or from the results?).
The search algorithm is probably similar in both google search and google news. But the domain for google news is narrower.

[Kaiser]

Cristopher: That might be true but it raises the questions of (a) algorithmically, how does one build a classifier of what's news and what's not news, and (b) the role of a company such as Google in such a classification.

But that theory also needs to explain how the following articles in the WSJ written by the same author show up in Google News search: "Some elite colleges review an application in 8 minutes (or less)", "Prizes for Everyone: How colleges use scholarships to lure students", etc.

I

[Paul]

DuckDuckGo manages to find it too, even on its potentially narrower News tab: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=You+Graduated+Cum+Laude%2C+So+Did+Everyone+Else&t=h_&ia=news&iar=news

[Antonio Rinaldi]

I have noticed that the new version of Google news changed it for the worse.
Before, the user did can select among all the sources for the same news. Now, it lists only one (Google) choice.
Embarassing.

P.S.: Kaiser, is it possible to subscribe for the comment replies? Thank you.

[Kate]

I think that Google News requires that articles are free available to readers (even if just via those "6 free articles per month" offers). Is it possible this article is now behind a paywall?

[Kaiser]

AR: I checked the blog settings. The feed for comments is turned on. Have to look into this some more.

Kate: If that is true, then no WSJ articles will appear on Google News anymore as I believe they turned off the "leaky paywall." But hard to imagine a news aggregator that does not carry any WSJ articles!