It’s now evident online news publishers are not quite pleased with the way search engines index their sites.

Today, these publishers will unveil their new proposals at the Associated Press headquarters to prevent any disagreements with leading search engines like Google and Yahoo!

Currently, crawlers of different search engines follow the rules of news sites as stated in their text file named as “robots.txt”. However, they still feel this method is not flexible enough to express their terms and conditions.

Common complaints include posting of news summaries, photos, and headlines without permission. The system called Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) is created to avoid any legal problems.

While Google welcome these proposals, they will need time to thoroughly evaluate these proposed extensions to make sure these represent the needs of the majority and not of a single community.

“Ultimately, ACAP will benefit everyone: publishers, search engines and, most of all, consumers, by creating a fair and content-rich online experience for all of us: no standards wars; no proprietary monopolies; open collaboration: win, win for all,” said Gavin O’Reilly, chairman The World Association of Newspapers, to PC Pro.

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