What are the different tactics for getting ranked/ included in Google finance searches such as http://www.google.com/finance/company_news?q=NASDAQ:ADBE

[joemascaro]

I don't know what ranking factors they are using for this feed. The results vary greatly from a search done at google.com or google.com/news and google.com/finance

I'm working with a website that regularly publishes finance-related news and currently gets traffic from google finance. I'm wondering what we can do to optimize our news articles to possibly show more prominently or more often.

Thanks

[joemascaro]

Monica,

Thanks so much for your help. I was having trouble finding any further information through my own research, maybe I can get some clues from Google News. I will also be experimenting and maybe can share my findings.

I appreciate it

-Joe

[monicawright]

Hi there,

I asked quite a few people, including some SEO's from the most prominent financial news publishers in the country. Unfortunately nobody has researched Google Finance at that granular level. It was described as an "algo overlay", using News as the foundation. The best recommendation I can provide is that you could do your own brief analysis of 200-300 stories on Finance, and look for attributes that correlate between them.

Sorry this isn't specifically answering your questions, but we would certainly welcome any research. Good luck!

[monicawright]

Hi there,

I asked quite a few people, including some SEO's from the most prominent financial news publishers in the country. Unfortunately nobody has researched Google Finance at that granular level. It was described as an "algo overlay", using News as the foundation. The best recommendation I can provide is that you could do your own brief analysis of 2-300 stories on Finance, looking for attributes that correlate between them.

Sorry this isn't specifically answering your questions, but we would certainly welcome any research. Good luck!

[monicawright]

Hi there,

Didn't want to leave you hanging, looking into a few things and will get back to you!

[joemascaro]

Hi Monica,

Thanks for your response. We've already done all of your suggestions, and I have a few follow-up questions:

In addition to getting generally better uptake into Google Finance, a few specific questions are:
1. What determines the set of companies that GF associates with an article?  Any suggestions for keywords in the metadata or text of the article?
2. What determines how long the article stays on the feed on the right-hand side of GF?  We think it's a function of our site's reputation, the clickthrough rate on the article title, and the frequency of competing articles on the company.  We often see our articles appear on GF but last only a few minutes.
3. How long must the article be?  When we write articles less than ~300 words they don't appear on GF, but other sites regularly have much shorter articles in GF.

[monicawright]

Hi there,

Submitting to Google Finance has the same requirements for Google News, including unique URL structure (incorporating 3 digits), creating permanent URLs (no overwriting), and that the content is updated every day. You also should submit the site as content for Google News.

If you haven't already, creating a Google News Sitemap is also on the top of the list, which helps Google gain access to news articles a lot more efficiently. Although Google notes that it "does not favor sites that use New Sitemaps", I find it useful simply because it also creates a separate tab in Webmaster Tools, making troubleshooting a lot easier.

I hope this helps point you in the right direction!