News Blog
The official blog from the team at Google News
Designing News for you on the go
Friday, December 6, 2013
Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Product Manager, Google News and Social
Increasingly people are reading News “on the go” and using their smartphones to keep abreast of the latest happenings around the globe. Over the next few days Google News readers on Android and iOS devices will start to see a beautiful new version of the mobile web app that will provide an improved overall experience resulting in a kind of real time news desk for you on your phone.
Here are just some of the highlights:
Improved overall look-and-feel making it easier to read and track separate stories.
Ability to customize the webapp to suit your taste by changing the theme from light to dark, the font size and opting for a larger “story card” with more information per story at your fingertips (from the Settings menu, at top right).
Simplified navigation to any section within News; just click on the Google News icon (top left) to see a list of available sections (including any custom sections you created).
Easier integration with Google Feedback located in the menu at the top right.
Additionally we have ensured that some favorite desktop features have been included such as:
A weather gadget in the Local section.
The popular “Editors Picks” option.
Social posts from Google + related to the story are included in the article cluster.
We’re launching in the US first and plan to bring the same experience to all our international editions soon.
All this goodness is packaged in a browser so give it a try by just visiting
news.google.com
from the Chrome/Safari browser on either Android or iOS phones.
More News at Your Fingertips
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Anand Paka, Google News Product Manager
Did my favorite team win or lose? Should I carry sunscreen or rain gear when I go hiking this weekend? And what did I miss in the world of technology and business? These quintessential questions of the day are all ones that Google News can provide quick answers to with some nifty new features. The aim is all about making news more relevant and useful to you by surfacing content that you might need in a hurry.
1. For avid sports fans, a newly introduced “Sports Scores” section on the News homepage and the Sports page will give a snapshot of live, recently concluded and imminent sporting activity. From this summary, it’s easy to dive in further and do things like click on a score for details of the match or on a specific team to get recent news about it. The section is customizable; for example, if you prefer not to see hockey scores, you can turn hockey ‘off’ while keeping the other sports ‘on’. You can also remove the entire section if you prefer. At the outset, we’re launching in the US, with the big four sporting organizations covering basketball, football, baseball and hockey. Over time, this section will expand to other countries and sports. Stay tuned.
2. Our homepage also has a new Weather section on the right-hand column. With a quick glance, this section lets you see the 4-day weather forecast starting from today. The weather section is ‘smart’ - it defaults to show the weather for your current location. (As with local news, you can
set this location manually
.) We think this is a neat feature as you can track local weather conditions right next to the top stories without having to jump elsewhere to get this information.
3.The Editors’ Picks section has been a great channel for publishers and readers alike. It offers publishers a unique way to showcase their best work and build their brand, while enabling readers to discover great content that they might otherwise miss. Today we have extended Editors’ Picks from our homepage to our section pages so that you can now enjoy these hand picked articles for the particular section that you are reading at any given time. Editors’ Picks are now being introduced into the Technology and Business sections with plans to add more over time.
Look for these features the next time you visit Google News.
A reminder about promotional and commerce journalism
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Posted by
Richard Gingras,
Sr. Director, News & Social Products
Credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values, and ones which we all regard as crucial attributes of a great news site. It’s difficult to be trusted when one is being paid by the subject of an article, or selling or monetizing links within an article. Google News is not a marketing service, and we consider articles that employ these types of promotional tactics to be in violation of our
quality guidelines
.
Please remember that
like Google search
, Google News takes action against sites that violate our quality guidelines. Engagement in deceptive or promotional tactics such as those described above may result in the removal of articles, or even the entire publication, from Google News.
If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you
separate non-news content
on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only.
Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.
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