Google News is a repository of news. They compile news from 7000 new sources in a searchable database. The news is selected, compiled, and fed to users though computers. There are no human editors at Google making judgment calls on which stories to add and which to delete.

So it seems funny that when you search for “John Kerry” on Google News you will find more conservative stories than liberal stories. When you search for “George Bush” there is a more balanced representation of stories.

How does this happen? The answer may help us all better use Google as a search tool and a promotional tool for our own web sites.

Mainstream and more liberal news sources tend to refer to John Kerry once in an article and then abbreviate to Kerry; conservative sources tend to refer to Kerry by his full name through a story. Using Google’s method of matching articles to searchers, an article that contains John Kerry throughout is going to rank higher as a better match for a search for John Kerry than an article that refers to Kerry.

It serves as a good reminder to those of us with web site – try to include on your web pages terms that your customers would use to find you through Google or any other search engine.