With the current tragedies such as the Norwegian massacre and the death of Amy Winehouse, news has been buzzing about the two incidents. Google has been swamped with searches for these stories and thus one would wonder, how does Google rank news stories, and what makes your news better than someone else's? Google News is one of the premier news portals on the web, and is driven by aggregated news sources. Of course,

If you've worked with Google in the past you'll know just how hard it is to rank for Google Places for many searches. It's also apparent how important Google Places have become - they often take up the top parts of the page for a search term. So even if you rank first for a certain keyword, you could see three to six Google Places ranking above you. The question is, what tricks can you use to secure your spot? 1.