[snewe]

Google's crawler (especially the blog and news ones) requires a three digit or larger number in the url. That is why you should keep a year/date in a url.

Update: Not sure why I got downvoted, but here is the reference from Google News:

http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...

[codeflo]

Don't downvote snewe, he/she is correct: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=...

I can't figure out why though. It sounds like an incredibly stupid rule.

[Psyonic]

Why do they want this?