Google News Blog: 2012

A better Google News experience on tablets

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Product Manager, Google News [Edited 02/13/2013] Update: The new Google News experience for tablets is now available in most English editions worldwide. Hope you enjoy it! There’s something special about reading news on your tablet. Indeed, swiping through Google News on your tablet is a comfortable and effective way to find more articles from great publications that satisfy your needs and tickle your serendipitous interests. Starting today, Google News feels even more natural and fluid on tablet devices. For example:

You can find new articles, news sources, and even topics of interest with intuitive gestures. Swipe horizontally between sections – from Business to Entertainment, for example – or tap “Explore in depth” to see multiple articles and other info related to a particular story.

We’ve also added more breathing room between articles, making it easier to spot the stories you really care about.

We think these improvements will help Google News send even more visits to news sites (six billion per month and counting).

To give it a try, just visit news.google.com with your Nexus 7, Nexus 10, or iPad.

Improving news search with expandable results

Monday, October 22, 2012

updated

Click-to-expand news results clusters: Each news results cluster is collapsed down to one result with the exception of the first cluster. Click on the “Show more” link to see articles from more sources. This improvement makes it much easier to scan through the search results to find just the collection of news coverage you’re looking for.

Multimedia: Within some of the expanded results clusters you’ll see a bar of videos and photos that relate to each cluster’s content. Click on any of these for more coverage of the story.

Layout updates: The cluster image now appears on the left and the source information has been moved to below the article links for better readability.

You can try this out by doing a search on Google News or by clicking on the “News” filter on the web search results page. We hope you like these changes and that they improve your experience searching the news.

Google News turns 10

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Distinguished Scientist and Founder, Google News

Google News todayLocal NewsPersonalizationEditors’ PicksSpotlightAuthorshipSocial DiscussionsdesignmobileFast FlipLiving StoriesTimelineHangouts on AirOfficial Google blog

A newly hatched way to tag your news articles

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Posted by Rudy Galfi, Product Manager, Google News
The day after the historic 1929 stock market crash, Variety bannered their front page with these words: “WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG.” It’s a great headline: pithy, catchy, and expressive of the substance of the story as well as the scale of its consequences. It’s also worth noting that Variety’s editors had a full day to write the headline—millions of readers weren’t trying to search for the story within seconds of hearing about it.
The Web has transformed both how news organizations report information and the way users find it. Imagine if “WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG” were used as a headline today by an online news site. Since the headline is a sequence of text that’s only readily understandable by a human, most machine algorithms would probably attach some sort of biological association to it. In turn, this would make it difficult for millions of curious users who are using Google.com or Google News to find the best article about the stock market crash they just heard about.
To help solve this problem, today we’re excited to announce a news_keywords metatag. The goal is simple: empower news writers to express their stories freely while helping Google News to properly understand and classify that content so that it’s discoverable by our wide audience of users.
Similar in spirit to the plain keywords metatag, the news_keywords metatag lets publishers specify a collection of terms that apply to a news article. These words don’t need to appear anywhere within the headline or body text. Taking the Variety example above, news keywords such as “stocks”, “stock market”, or “crash” would be helpful in allowing Google News to better understand the article content for ranking without forcing the editors to water down the creativity of a great headline. Because the metatag appears only as part of the HTML code of a page, visitors to a site won’t ever see the magic under the hood.
Keep in mind that this metatag will be one signal among many that our algorithms use to determine ranking. The news_keywords metatag is intended as a tool -- but high-quality reporting and interesting news content remain the strongest ways to put your newsroom’s work in front of Google News users.
You can learn more about getting news_keywords set up by reading our Help Center article.

Updates to Google News US Edition: Larger Images, Realtime Coverage and Discussions

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Posted by Scott Zuccarino, Product Manager, Google News

When a story breaks, Google News is designed to give you the most relevant articles from a variety of sources --- from national news outlets, to local points of view, to expert opinion pieces. To continue to expand your views on the news, we are adding three new features for those using our US edition: larger images on our main page; a new realtime coverage page to surface the latest articles and commentary; and relevant Google+ posts for a new social perspective.

Get coverage in real time
Our new realtime coverage page is now available for every news story as soon as they become available to Google News.

See relevant comments on top stories
Many news stories inspire vibrant discussions on Google+, and today we're starting to add this content to both the News homepage, and the realtime coverage pages. This way you can see what your circles, journalists covering the story and notables like politicians or others who are the subjects of stories have to say about breaking news, and even contribute to the discussion directly from Google News.

Note that these Google+ discussions will only appear for those of you reading the US edition who have signed in and upgraded to Google+.

If you'd like to try these new Google+ features in News, it's easy to upgrade here. That said, if you prefer your Google News to contain just news stories and no Google+ posts, you can either log out of Google or turn off the display of Google+ posts via the Google News settings page.

We're rolling out all of these features over the next week, so don't worry if you don't see them immediately. Today's updates are the latest examples of how we're working to provide users with a beautiful, consistent experience across Google. So we hope you enjoy them.
Update 9/24/2012: Larger images and real time coverage will begin rolling out to all editions. In addition, Google+ posts relevant to individual stories will be available in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

A new way to access quality content online

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Posted by Paul McDonald, Product Manager

Whether we’re getting the latest election news, making sense of the day’s stock market activity or looking for an update on our favorite celebrities, we rely on publishers to inform and entertain us. Online publishers often fund the creation of this content through ads; sometimes they ask you to pay for content directly, by buying a subscription or purchasing a particular article.

Now, you may see a new option: the ability to access some of this content by responding to microsurveys, without having to pull out your wallet or sign in. When a site has implemented this option, you’ll see a prompt that offers you a choice between answering a market research question or completing another action specified by the publisher (such as signing up for an account or purchasing access). All responses are completely anonymous -- they aren’t tied to your identity or later used to target ads. The prompts look like this:

Publishers get paid for hosting surveys. A number of publishers, such as the The Texas Tribune, the Star Tribune and Adweek have already started running these microsurveys on their sites.

So what’s the point of these questions? From international brands to local food trucks, every business owner wants to make important decisions with their customers’ feedback in mind. That’s why we’ve created Google Consumer Surveys, a new business-facing product that makes custom market research easy. It enables companies to ask questions (the ones you'll later see on your screen) and get back quantitative results quickly, accurately and cost-effectively. Companies have already been using it to research everything from online shopping behavior (Lucky Brand Jeans) to gluten-free baking mixes (King Arthur Flour), and to assess brand awareness (Timbuk2) and inform product development (479 Popcorn). Google shares the money these companies spend with our publisher partners.

The idea behind Google Consumer Surveys is to create a model that benefits everyone. You get to keep enjoying your favorite online content, publishers have an additional option for making money from that content, and businesses have a new way of finding out what their customers want.

If you’re a publisher interested in running microsurveys on your site, let us know.