The brains behind Google News, Krishna Bharat, braves the crowd at the Online News Association Conference.

Bharat might be seen as both friend or foe, so there is a great deal of interest in what he has to say.

He uses his time to explain how Google News works, crawling for news material that is arranged into story clusters.

“We rank news primary based on how important editors across the world think a story is,” says Bharat. The aim of Google News is to present a broad range of news and views.

The algorithms measure the degree of reporting on a story by analysing the quantity of coverage.

The ranking on Google News is based on the freshness of the story. But Google also pays attention to originality, and the quality and expertise of the publication source.

This is measure by looking at how much does a publication produce in this category and how do uses use the news sources. From this, Google can infer that ESPN is valuable to user for US sports, for example, says Bharat.

Asked about duplicate news stories, Bharat answers: “We pay attention to who first publishes a story and the statue of that publication.”

But he is less forthcoming when questioned about the real-time web. He says Google has been working hard over the last nine months to speed up the appearance of breaking news stories, but there is still a long way to go.

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