John Batelle discusses selection criteria for getting a site listed on Google News and concludes that there are opaque editorial processes going on which Google is doing little to shine a light on.

Where does all the Google traffic go? Bill Tancer’s Hitwise blog provided the answer – a breakdown of all the US Google traffic by Google site. The main Google site still attracts 80% of the traffic, and images comes in at #2 with 8.6%.

Matt Cutts, the Googler who blogs mainly about SEO, has posted some simple guides to SEO onto Google Video. As he says, the quality is not polished as they were shot at home using amateur equipment and uploaded without editing. Worth a look.

John Battelle reports on more online sleuthing which has unearthed experimental services from Google.

In the experimental bin sandbox.google.com, added 14 services to his “sandbox” account. Some of these are already disclosed, so only the surprises are listed here: Google Events, Google Guess, Google Online Assessment, Google Real Estate Search, Mobile Marketplace, New Service (AKA Workplace), and New Services.