News Blog
The official blog from the team at Google News
2007: Year in Review
Monday, March 3, 2008
by Yaron Binur, Product Manager
As we're now in early March, it occurs to me that it's still not too late to look back on the past year -- or to look ahead to what's to come in 2008. I look back over last year, and feel happy about what we've accomplished with Google News. And I'm excited to do even more to help you have a great news experience. For me, some of last year's highlights are:
Features
We made some significant changes to several of our language editions, such as offering a new way of visually depicting the news with our
image version
, and integrating
high quality videos
into our news stories.
We increased the relevance of Google News by giving people involved in news stories the ability to
comment
. This feature has given rise to comments from experts across a varied group of stories, with many notable comments from college professors, attorneys, elected officials and others.
Quality improvements
In August we launched
improved duplicate detection
, making it easier for you to eliminate identical stories from search results. We improved the
advanced search capability
and launched it internationally, to help you surface the content you care about.
In December we introduced significant
ranking improvements
to many of our editions, which allows us to properly highlight important local sources in languages where we're including sources from around the world. It also improves our ability to surface the most recent articles published about a breaking story.
News on other properties
A renewed focus in 2007 was to improve the way you get your news on other properties. In October we launched a new
iGoogle gadget
for a richer and more advanced news experience within iGoogle. We also tried our first experiment in social news by launching a
Facebook application
where people could both read and share the news.
Publisher improvements
It's important to us to include as much of our publishers' content as possible, so that we can provide a more diverse news experience for you. Our bot can sometimes have difficulty crawling all of the great content from our sources, so in 2006 we launched
Webmaster Tools for News
, which allows English-language publishers to submit content to Google News and see error reports for articles our bot wasn't able to crawl. In 2007, we enabled
Webmaster Tools
for publishers in all languages.
While we feel we accomplished a good deal in 2007, we hope to accomplish even more this year. Please keep
telling us
what you think about our new features, and what new features would really make you happy.
Clarifications on local - for news readers and publishers
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Posted by Gina Bonzani, News Support Team
Two weeks ago we launched a new feature that lets you create local sections on your personalized Google News page. After some feedback we've been getting, we wanted to clarify a couple of issues. We want to make sure that it's easy for you to use this feature, but we also want to ensure that publishers know how to best update the information about their sites.
First, I'll address the specific steps that you should take to use the local feature. In both our feedback and some of the press coverage on this feature, there was some confusion about how to actually create a local section. Specifically, a number of people tried to enter a zip code or a city/state combination in our main search bar and did not get the results they wanted. Currently, you must create a local section to get local results. We're working to make this more clear on the site and improve the functionality. In the meantime, here's the step-by-step process to create your own local section.
First, look for the local section on your front page and the local search bar, as you see here:
All you have to do is enter the information in this section and PRESTO! You've got yourself a local section. If you don't see this promotion, you can set up a local section via your personalized page settings. Just access this option using "Personalize this page" or "Edit this personalized page" (if you've already personalized). Once you've clicked on this you'll see a menu similar to this image (US edition only). Click on "Add a local section."
Once you've clicked on this local section link, you'll see a place to enter a zip code or city/state combination. Use the drop-down menu to choose the number of stories you'd like to see. Once you click "Add Section" you'll see this section on your personalized Google News page.
And that's it -- you should be up and running with local news from wherever you want it. We're still working to improve this new feature both with our results and the features on our site, so keep the feedback coming!
The other feedback we got came from a number of publishers asking us how they could make sure we get all the great local news they're producing and ensure they shown up in results for their readers. As we explained, most of the work takes place on our side as we read every article to understand what location the story is about. However, we also look to check that against the location of the publisher. If you're a publisher and want to make sure we have all the latest information about your site, please contact our support team. If you notice that we are not including all of your articles, please
send us
a list of your news sections. If you notice that we don't include location information for your source,
let us know
what your accurate location is. Finally, if you're
not included
in News at all, let us know and we'll review your site for inclusion.
We hope the local feature is a interesting and useful feature for you to get information about cities near you or of interest to you. We're always working to improve our product, and appreciate
your feedback
.
DITL Volume 1: News' First Engineer
Friday, February 15, 2008
Posted by Lucy Zhang, Software Engineer
As one of the first engineers assigned to Google News, I'm excited to kick off the inaugural Day in the Life ("DITL") post. Over the next few months, we hope to bring you a unique window into the world of Google News by publishing more DITL posts from other people who work on News. Our team is diverse and passionate, and we hope that we can show that to you in this series of posts. I've worked on Google News for over three years, and have seen a lot of amazing innovations. So enjoy my description of a typical day here for me at Google....
9:30am: Get into work and check my email. At Google we have engineers from all over the world, so I often receive code reviews and/or questions from those working in India or China. I starred them in my email inbox so I'm reminded to get back to them later in the day.
10:00 - 11:00 am: Attend the News team weekly meeting. Our team's product manager sets a unique agenda every week. We normally use this meeting to do project presentations so the team can learn what each engineer is working on. Sometimes we review recently launched features and forecast upcoming launches. This is also where we sync up with our international offices.
11:30am: The Google News Frontend team meets so each team member can provide a status update on their project tasks and reveal any dependencies that might be holding up their progress.
12:00pm: Usually my office-mates Dan and Chris start to initiate lunch. They like to browse the menus of different cafes on campus and usually pick the one with the best dessert. Once a location is decided, we gather the rest of the team to join us.
12:10pm: We've arrived at Off the Grid cafe. After getting our food, we sit, eat, and chat about the future of online journalism and how we can make Google News better.
1:00pm: After lunch, I like to block off an hour to do code reviews. A code review is when someone else other than the author examines the code for correctness and readability. News has many remote engineers so many code reviews come from India or China. I try to complete these by the end of the day, so they do not have to wait another 24 hours to hear a response.
2:00: Attend a meeting with UX (User Experience) designers, our product manager, and other engineers to discuss design specifications for a new feature. We come up with use cases and list out pros and cons of various solutions. In the end, our goal is to build a feature that is useful.
3:13pm: I'm pager-holder for the week and the pager goes off. The pager goes off when something requires immediate attention since News is 24/7 and every minute counts. The team has built numerous useful monitoring tools and status pages which I use to debug the issue.
4:04pm: Our product manager comes into our office to check on the status of a feature release planned for this week. I inform him that all the pre-launch procedures are being followed and we should be on schedule for launch. He leaves with a big smile.
4:30pm: I get some coding time and work on the implementation for the feature launches I'm responsible for.
6:33pm: An engineer from other project drops by my office to ask questions about how to integrate their product into Google News. I share my experience with him from when we did similar integrations with Google Finance and Archive News Search.
7:00pm: I go grab dinner from No Name cafe and eat at my desk.
8:20pm: I finish replying to some emails before getting on the Google shuttle and head home.
9:30pm - 12am: I normally stay online during this time since this is when some international engineers are getting into work. I try to be available to answer questions using gChat. It is also a good time to get some work done before the new day starts.
All News is Local
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Posted by Andre Rohe and Rohit Ananthakrishna, Software Engineers
Something you already know about Google News is that we crawl thousands of sources from around the world. This means you get as many different perspectives on a story from many perspectives. A while back, we started thinking about how to bring this same diversity of sources to local news, so that "local" doesn't necessarily mean "limited".
Today we're releasing a new feature to find your local news by simply typing in a city name or zip code. While we’re not the first news site to aggregate local news, we’re doing it a bit differently -- we're able to create a local section for any city, state or country in the world and include thousands of sources. We’re not simply looking at the byline or the source, but instead we analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.
You can see an example with the latest news from Duluth, Minnesota:
As always, results will be clustered with multiple sources on a story. The top stories for a given area will be at the top of your results. Our article rankings will also take into account a publication's location so we can promote all the local sources for each story.
This feature is still a bit of an experiment for us, which is why today it’s only available in English. But we hope to launch this in other languages and editions soon. Please
let us know
what you think!
Following the polls on Super Tuesday
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Posted by Josh Cohen, Business Product Manager
If you somehow escaped US electioneering up to this point, you probably won't today, Super Tuesday, when 24 states choose their candidates for the fall election. This will be the largest number of primaries going on at one time in the history of the U.S. electoral system.
Over the last few weeks and months, there has been a massive volume of news coverage, statistics and polls -- and there will be even more today. Our mission is to help organize all of it for you, so you can find what you're looking for. There are a number of ways Google can help you keep track of all the candidates and issues -- from Maps with the latest results, to YouTube videos from voters across the country. You can read all about these initiatives on the
Google Blog
.
Of course, we want to do our part as well. In addition to all the latest stories from thousands of sources in our new
Elections section
, we've also put together a
gadget
that tracks the progress of the candidates in each of the 24 states. Here's an example of how it might look; please note these are not actual results!
In addition to providing up to date information about the results on all the candidates as the polls close, you'll also be able to view this information on Google Maps. You can see the results across the United States, within a particular region, and even as specific as a particular county.
So check it out and
let us know
what you think.
We want to hear from you!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Posted by Greta Ghizzo Van Everen, News Support Team
If you're looking for an easy way to let us know what new features you'd like in Google News, look no further. Today, we're launching a new
feature request form
that will make this process a lot easier. We tried to include many of the most popular and interesting features that people have suggested. Whether it's a new
standard section
or new search functionality, we want to know what's important to you when you're using Google News. You can select up to 5 choices from this form and if the feature you want is not listed, suggest it with the "I have another idea" box at the bottom of the page. We'll use your ideas to help inform us about what changes to make to News in the coming months.
And for the entire News team, I'd like to thank you for all the feedback you've given us over the years. We hope the form will make this process easier for you to send in your suggestions. Stay tuned to find out which new features are coming soon.
Tracking election coverage
Friday, December 21, 2007
Posted by David Garnick, News Engineering Team
I'm a bit of a junkie for political news, and of course I follow elections. The U.S. section of Google News covers a broad range of topics that are of interest to a national audience; thus, typically, few stories pertain to elections. There is no simple query that I can use in the News search box that will give me a broad and current selection of stories related to the elections. To provide direct access to extensive coverage of the candidates, the campaigns, and the issues, Google News has launched a new Elections section on our
front page
. This brings you the top stories on national, state, and local elections throughout the United States.
The Elections section appears on the front page along with all of the previously supported sections. If you've personalized your front page, you can add this new section with a single click of the button following the announcement at the top of the front page. If you navigate to the full
Elections section
, there is a gadget you can use to "Follow the Candidates." The candidates tab allows you to select the candidates you wish to track. The video, news, and blogs tabs allow you to find content specific to those candidates. The maps tab allows you to follow those candidates on the campaign trail. You can use the button below the gadget to add the gadget to your iGoogle page.
Now I can easily satisfy my appetite for election news, and as a big election season gets underway, I'm excited and proud to be working on the Google News Team to help keep others informed too.
Cricket Scores in Google News
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Posted by Sadeesh Duraisamy & Prasanna Meda, Software Engineers
We're excited to share a new feature for
Google News India
: you can now get the latest cricket scores right on the front page! If there's a cricket match going on somewhere in the world (and there always is) you will have the latest information available. And if you want all the cricket news in addition to the latest scores while you're on the Google News front page, you can personalize Google News by
creating a custom section
. In fact, even if you don't read Google News India, but still want to get the latest cricket scores, simply add a custom section from the India edition to your edition, and you'll be able to see the latest cricket scores on your Google News front page wherever you live. Be sure to check out our
Hindi News
edition as well.
We hope this gives you your fill of cricket scores and more, so
let us know
what you think.
New Advanced News search
Monday, December 17, 2007
Posted by Sheng Yu and Sean Wan, Software Engineers
Want to find articles from a specific news source? You may not know of some tricks to make Google News do the work for you. Try using our site operator along with a keyword, like this: [site:iht.com Paris]. Or you can also use our
advanced news search
page. Just type the source name into the news source box and click the search button, and you'll get stories from the source you want.
And if you've ever forgotten some or all of the name of a news source, in the past, you'd have to rack your brain to figure out the complete name first. We kept this in mind when we improved our advanced search. You don't need to spend time trying to remember the complete name of a news source any more. Just tell us the words you know: [source:"new york"]. Then we will return articles from those sources whose name contains these specific words.
You can also use the new, smarter advanced news search page. When you are typing the source name into the source box, suggestions will be shown in a drop-down list. If you select one of the suggested sources, your search results will include only articles from the source. If you just type in some keywords, articles from those sources containing the specific words will be returned.
One more thing: you can also do operator searches and use the advanced search page in all editions now. We hope you enjoy these new features, and we'd love to hear your
feedback
.
Quantity and quality
Friday, December 7, 2007
Posted by Sharad Jain, Software Engineer
The goal of Google News has always been to offer as many perspectives on a story as possible to help you better understand current events. That's why we crawl thousands of sources from around the world. We try to help you find stories in every language, in every country, from every newspaper and for every story. But Google News isn't just about including every story; it's about helping you find the stories that matter most to you. The way we do this is with our news ranking algorithms, which are designed to enable you to make sense of all this information by showing you the most relevant news first.
We are constantly improving our algorithms to bring you a better organized, more relevant selection of the day's news. This is an ongoing process, but in the past few months we have been working on a number of improvements that we hope bring us closer to this goal. While many of these aren't new features that you might notice right away, we hope they'll provide a better experience.
One example we recently released is a new algorithm to help determine the most recent update to a story. In other words, it lets us find something new that's been added to a breaking story. So instead of just seeing the most recent publishing activity for a breaking story, we highlight the sources which brought you the information in the first place. Once there's new information from another source, we update our results so you get any new developments to the story.
Another signal we've added helps us recognize the importance of local context in a story. In order to provide a local angle to global events, we have started actively promoting high quality local reporting in addition to coverage from foreign sources. This means we try to find sources at the scene of a story who are doing original reporting. It may be a national or international story with many sources from around the world reporting on it, but often times one of the best sources of information on a story are those closest to it.
There are quite a few other exciting quality initiatives we are working on, but we don't want to take away all the suspense! So keep reading Google News and sending us
your ever-helpful feedback
on these changes. Namaste!
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