They're Breaking the News Search Algorithms ...

... and pissing me off.

"They" are the publications that, over time, have begun switching to "live updates" format for news stories.

I'll be browsing Google News or Bing News, and see a headline something like:

Fed Raises Rates; Minutes Project Further Increases in Q3

But when I click thru to "the story," the headline is now:

New US Home Starts Down 5%

Because that publication is just running a single, frequently updated page (e.g. "US Economy -- Live Updates") with the latest story on top, and now the Fed story is fourteen items down in the mix.

I don't have anything against the "live updates" format, I guess (I like live-blogging events, etc.).

But "live updates" stuff being indexed by news search engines makes it difficult to use search to find an interesting specific story and go to it.

Maybe Google/Bing should come up with (and penalize the non-use of) a metadata tag to distinguish static stories from "live updates" pages.