It appears that some major news publications such as USA Today and the BBC are tricking Google News to rank their older stories at the top of the Google News sections.
By tricking I mean, they are having their older stories show up as recent stories in those Google News sections.
I've been following this Google News Help thread for about three weeks now. Honestly, I assume at first it was a bug of some sorts either on Google or USA Today's side. But now that it has been going on for so long, I think something else is going on.
For example, USA Today has this story currently in the top spot in the Entertainment section of Google News:
It says 14 minutes old, right?
Click through to the story, and you will see it was published yesterday before noon.
Chris, a top contributor in the Google News forum said he did pass this along to Google to investigate, they are looking into it but he has no update.
Do you think this is an intentional Google News manipulation by these publications or not?
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
Update: Google responded to my press request to tell me the issue is being addressed. What the issue was, I currently do not know but I am trying to find out.
