Recent Google Updates Have SEOs Scrambling
(Search Engine Watch blog)

Like a celebrity sitting down with Barbara Walters, Google News has decided to clear up rumors surrounding how articles are included and ranked. In a post on the official Google News blog, software engineer Andy Golding addressed some assumptions floating around about how articles are indexed.

Here are the Myths:
* Having an image next to your article improves your ranking
* Timing the publication of your article improves your article ranking
* There's no way to see why my articles weren't included in Google News
* Publishing a sitemap helps my rankings
* If I put AdSense on my site, my article rankings will improve

And now the Truths:
* Redesigning my site may affect my coverage in Google News
* Articles that are just images or video won't be included
* Updating an article after posting it will create problems with Google News