Google News has started accepting comments (only in the US for now) on its search results pages. These comments can be made by those people who are mentioned in the particular news story on that search result page. They can do so by emailing their comments to news-comments@google.com. Reporters/ news publishers can also comment on their own stories. See an example of a comment here.

What are the fallouts on the PR industry? At first glance, this certainly looks good. With this development, we can say that media stories are not the end of everything. Even after being published, we can have our say in articles that mention us/ our clients. Steve Rubel from Micropersuasion writes ‘this is certainly a boon for PR professionals who have longed for a way to respond to what is largely an automated system’. Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration pointed out that this could provide a bit of a respite in neutralising negative publicity. Remember though, this is just online. Stories on news portals get published on their print editions as well. Many times, it is the circulation of print editions that news publications boast about, not their online page views.

On the other hand, Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped wrote that this feature might also aid to dilute news reports; imagine, say, an Associated Press reporter who researched some weeks to come up with an incredibly fact-checked piece about food poisoning with Acme Inc’s products. Acme Inc, trying to prevent an image scandal, now issues a factually wrong but well-written counter-statement to Google News, who will put it next to the news bits. Readers might now figure, ‘Oh, AP got it wrong I guess, there’s the counter-statement right there, I’ll move on to other news.’

How much are we/ our clients willing to participate?

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land wrote that it all depends on whether news-makers find it worthwhile to participate. I agree. Wonder how many times I could persuade my clients to comment on a news story that featured them or their companies. They would just want me to handle it for them. So as Steve asked, could PR agencies comment on behalf of their clients? If no, corporate communications managers have an additional responsibility coming up for them.

One question that I feel like asking reading all these is that ‘don’t we have online news portals providing this already?’  We have many news portals like The Economic Times and The Financial Express providing the comment box to its readers and many more are following suit. Here in India, I hardly find any PR agency advising the client to comment on a story publicly online. They would rather contact the news publisher directly. Even if it is a negative news, there are other methods they indulge in.

Or imagine a scenario if this becomes the norm. If we get a negative coverage in a newspaper and somebody pointed it out to us and we reply, ‘Oh! look at what I wrote in on Google News Comments on that story. The journalist got all the facts wrong’. 

Will this become a publicity tool?
Suppose I’m a small company and somehow my name/ company name appeared in a tiny corner of a big industry story, would I want to add a comment on the story page in Google News detailing about my company and products? Would this bring me/ my company more visibility?

Can this lead to debates?
Suppose there is a story that compares two competing brands. If one of them comments on the story in Google News highlighting its finer points, will the other follow suit? 

Will Google News become part of your media monitoring daily?
I see PR agencies using Google News only to monitor aggregated coverage on their clients from other news sources. In other words, they use Google News as a research and search tool and that was it. Now with this development, Google News will have its own content. These content needs to be monitored.

Whatever way, if this becomes big, expect more responsibility on online news search engines
So we talked about the need to participate/ manage the social media? Now manage the news search engines as well. Soon Yahoo News and the other upcoming search portals is likely to come out with something of its own and online news searches will never be that simple again.