NEW YORK — The Associated Press is proposing that publishers attach descriptive tags to news articles online in hopes of taming the free-for-all of news and information on the Web and generating more traffic for established media brands.
Tags identifying the author, publisher and other information — as well as any usage restrictions publishers hope to place on copyright-protected materials — would be packaged with each news article in a way that search engines can more easily identify.
By doing so, the AP hopes to make it easier for readers to find articles from more established news providers amid the ever-expanding pool of content online. That could lead to more traffic and more online advertising revenue for a beleaguered news industry.
If widely adopted, the tags should help computers better understand more information about a story, allowing Google and others to develop smarter search tools.
Although it is difficult to know how the extra information will change the way readers find online news, Google Inc. and others could conceivably develop search tools that would let users identify stories by a specific writer or from a specific city. Web portals could use the data to add more detailed summaries under search results.
The AP, which is already testing the tags on its own stories, says it wants to make its proposed format the industry standard, to be used by anyone producing news content, including other news outlets and bloggers.
The formatting is part of an effort by the AP to shift the dynamics of news on the Web.
Traditional news outlets have complained that search portals such as Google are too indiscriminate in their displayed results, leaving established news brands lost in the din of press releases, advertising and outdated material.
