Google Inc is giving more credit to the original reporting of news agencies like the Associated Press while setting the stage to generate advertising revenue from Google News, the company said on Friday.

Josh Cohen, business product manager of Google News, said his company is looking to reduce the proliferation of the same story from multiple news sites on Google News and thereby allow it to feature a greater variety of different news stories.

When you have many versions of the same story you are not providing different perspectives, Cohen said in a phone interview. For the users, we will be able to display a better selection of stories with less duplication, Cohen said.

The partners, which include Britain's Press Association, Canadian Press, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press of the United States, will have their stories featured with the organizations' own brands on Google News-hosted landing pages.

The changes won't affect the ranking of what stories turn up in the search results of Google News, Cohen stressed. If an AP story ranked 8th among different versions of a story previously, it would still rank 8th under the new service.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco)

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