Online newspaper publisher TownNews.com has signed up as the first user of a new “microformat” for online news, designed to increase articles’ search ratings. The hNews format is built by AP and the UK-based Media Standards Trust and is being used by TownNews on its BLOX CMS platform, which publishes digital “interactive editions” for 1,500 US newspapers. The microformats plan—first announced in July—is an attempt to “improve user experience, attract audiences and advertisers” through adding metadata tags to articles as standard, as AP’s technology VP Todd Martin puts it.

Everyone can use a boost in the Google search rankings, but this isn’t just about providing SEO services to local papers: AP and MST have more grand ambitions and say hNews is part of a “global effort to help the news industry adopt consistent news formats”. But as a Google (NSDQ: GOOG) spokesman pointed out to us in July, while the search giant has announced it will allow microformats to be shown in general search results and has had talks with AP on this matter—it’s also had talks with several “other publishers and organizations, about various formats for news”.

• AP, Media Standards Trust Propose News Microformat