What a news aggregator is and how it differs from a news outlet

The word gets used a lot and almost always loosely. An aggregator is not an outlet that copies stories, nor a search engine, nor a social network. It is something else, and understanding the difference settles a fair number of arguments.

What it is and is not

An aggregator gathers what others publish and presents it in order. It produces no content: no newsroom, no coverage, no fact-checking of what it displays. Its value lies not in the content but in the selection and ordering.

That last row matters: an aggregator does not answer for a story being true, but it does answer for having chosen reliable sources. If it includes anyone at all, that is its problem.

How it obtains content

There are three ways, very different from one another:

1. RSS feeds. The outlet publishes a channel with its latest pieces and the aggregator reads it. The clean route: the outlet decides what it exposes and can stop whenever it wants. How a feed works.
2. Agreements and APIs. An explicit arrangement, sometimes with payment. Common between large platforms and large groups.
3. Scraping. Extracting content directly from the site without the outlet offering it. The problematic route, both legally and technically.

An aggregator working from feeds is, by definition, taking only what the outlet has chosen to publish openly.

Types of aggregator

• General: aggregate all kinds of outlets, ordered by recency or your interests.
• Thematic: focused on one sector.
• Geolocated: ordered by proximity. That is the case with Snurkel, where what matters is not the topic but where it happens.
• Personal: feed readers where you pick each source yourself.

The tension with outlets

An old debate with reasonable arguments on both sides.

What outlets say: the aggregator benefits from content that costs money to produce, and if the reader stops at the headline and excerpt, the visit never arrives.

What aggregators say: they send traffic the outlet would not have, because almost nobody visits a local paper's homepage daily. People arrive article by article, and someone has to put it in front of them.

Both are true, and what decides each case is the specific design:

• If the excerpt is short and reading requires a click, the aggregator generates visits.
• If it reproduces the whole article, it replaces them.

That is the whole difference, and it is also where the legal line sits: quotation rights allow reproducing a brief fragment with attribution and a link, not the complete work.

What marks out a well-built one

If you run an outlet and are weighing whether to appear, check these five points:

1. Short excerpt. A few lines, not the article.
2. Visible attribution. Your name where it can be seen, not in small print.
3. Direct link to the original. Sending traffic to your site should be the natural path.
4. Easy exit. You should be able to request removal and get it within days, not months.
5. No exclusivity. Appearing there should never stop you appearing anywhere else.

That is the standard we work to at Snurkel: short excerpt, your byline, a link to your site, free registration and removal within 72 hours on request. It is set out on our page for media outlets.