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Bringing relevant news to you, regardless of language

Google News Blog — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:58:00 +0000

Posted by Yaroslav Kurovtsev, Software Engineer, Google Translate

To help bridge language barriers between you and the news of interest to you from around the world -- and to bring you more diverse perspectives on foreign events -- we’ve added a new “translate” button to the expandable story boxes in the U.S. English edition of Google News.

Clicking the translate button reveals the English translation of the original headline using Google Translate. Clicking on the headline takes you to the publisher’s website where you can choose to use Google Translate to see an English version of the entire article. Headlines are labeled with their country of origin.

To do this, we look for foreign articles from local sources on a relevant news topic. For example, in the case of the flood in Thailand, in addition to surfacing English articles from international press like New York Times, we might show a related article from a local source like อาร์วายที9.

At the same time, we hope readers will benefit from finding relevant news in other languages and being able to read it without knowing the language.

Google News now crawling with Googlebot

Google News Blog — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Posted by David Smydra, Google News Product Specialist

(Cross-posted on the Webmaster Central Blog)

Google News recently updated our infrastructure to crawl with Google’s primary user-agent, Googlebot. What does this mean? Very little to most publishers. Any news organizations that wish to opt out of Google News can continue to do so: Google News will still respect the robots.txt entry for Googlebot-News, our former user-agent, if it is more restrictive than the robots.txt entry for Googlebot.

Our Help Center provides detailed guidance on using the robots exclusion protocol for Google News, and publishers can contact the Google News Support Team if they have any questions, but we wanted to first clarify the following:

Although you’ll now only see the Googlebot user-agent in your site’s logs, no need to worry: the appearance of Googlebot instead of Googlebot-News is independent of our inclusion policies. (You can always check whether your site is included in Google News by searching with the “site:” operator. For instance, enter “site:yournewssite.com” in the search field for Google News, and if you see results then we are currently indexing your news site.)
Your analytics tool will still be able to differentiate user traffic coming to your website from Google Search and traffic coming from Google News, so you should see no changes there. The main difference is that you will no longer see occasional automated visits to your site from the Googlebot-news crawler.
If you’re currently respecting webmaster guidelines for Googlebot, you will not need to make any code changes to your site. Sites that have implemented subscriptions using a metered model or who have implemented First Click Free will not experience any changes. For sites which require registration, payment or login prior to reading any full article, Google News will only be able to crawl and index the title and snippet that you show all users who visit your page. Our Webmaster Guidelines provide additional information about “cloaking” (i.e., showing a bot a different version than what users experience). Learn more about Google News and subscription publishers in this Help Center article.
Rest assured, your Sitemap will still be crawled. This change does not affect how we crawl News Sitemaps. If you are a News publisher who hasn’t yet set up a News Sitemap and are interested in getting started, please follow this link.
For any publishers that wish to opt out of Google News and stay in Google Search, you can simply disallow Googlebot-news and allow Googlebot. For more information on how to do this, consult our Help Center.

As with any website, from time to time we need to make updates to our infrastructure. At the same time, we want to continue to provide as much control as possible to news web sites. We hope we have answered any questions you might have about this update. If you have additional questions, please check out our Help Center.

Enhancements to Google News for Android tablets and iPads

Google News Blog — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Posted by Arun Prasath, Tech Lead, Mobile Google News

Alongside working on improving the Google News design for smartphones, we have also been looking into enhancing our offering for tablet devices. Today, we are launching a few minor enhancements to Google News for Android tablets and iPads.

We have optimized columns in the home page and section pages so that they can be more easily viewed in portrait and landscape orientations. Some of the other updates include: a conveniently placed menu on the top for navigating across sections, support of finger swiping through the multimedia strip in expanded story boxes and a more friendly edition picker.

These improvements are now available in the U.S. edition. To view these changes, just type news.google.com on the browser of your favorite tablet.

A Few Google News Design Changes

Google News Blog — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:49:00 +0000

Posted by Jasson Schrock, User Experience Designer

Beginning today in the U.S. English edition of News, you may notice a few changes in the look and feel. This is part of a Google-wide initiative to improve your experience, and today we’re happy to extend this to Google News.

For starters, we’ve cleaned up the Google News homepage a bit. With fewer visual distractions and less clutter on the page, it should be faster to find the news important to you. The editions menu and “Personalize” button at the top should be easier to see. The “Personalize” button links to your recently consolidated personalization settings including your preferences for topics and favorite sources. Throughout the site, all the features and functionality are still there, but this updated design is aligned with the new consistent look across other recently updated Google sites like Gmail, Maps and Search.

Before

After

In the coming months, you’ll continue to see more improvements to the layout and design of the site, and we’ll also expand internationally.

Shareable Google News badges for your favorite topics

Google News Blog — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Posted by Natasha Mohanty, Engineer, Google News

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

On Google News, the average reader of political news has read 20 articles about politics in the last six months. Where do you stand?

Starting today, in the U.S. edition of Google News, you can see how voracious a news reader you are by earning Google News badges as you read articles about your favorite topics. The more you read, the higher level badge you’ll receive, starting with Bronze, then moving up the ladder to Silver, Gold, Platinum and finally, Ultimate.

We have more than 500 badges available, so no matter what kind of news you’re into, there’s a badge out there for you. Here’s a taste:

Your badges are private by default, but if you want, you can share your badges with your friends. Tell them about your news interests, display your expertise, start a conversation or just plain brag about how well-read you are. You can also add custom sections by hovering on a badge and clicking “add section” to read more about your favorite topics. To get started with badges, visit Google News from a signed-in account with web history enabled and then visit this page on our Help Center for instructions.

This is just the first step—the bronze release, if you will—of Google News badges. Once we see how badges are used and shared, we look forward to taking this feature to the next level.

In the spirit of continually trying to improve Google News, we have heard loud and clear from the many of you who asked us to separate our Sci/Tech section into two distinct sections. We are happy to report that we have now done this for all English editions, with more languages coming soon. We also combined some personalization settings from the “News for you” and News Settings menu into one handy sidebar at the top right corner of the home page, so you can easily tell us what you want to read on your Google News.

We hope you’ll badge up on Google News to keep track of what you’re reading, read more of what you love and share your passions with your friends.

Applauding the 2011 Knight News Challenge winners

Google News Blog — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:49:00 +0000

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Public Policy Blog)

Over the past few months, we’ve announced $5 million in grants to be distributed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the International Press Institute—two non-profit organizations developing new approaches to journalism in the digital age—and we’re pleased to congratulate the first initiatives that have been selected as part of that funding.

Today at M.I.T., the Knight Foundation showcased 16 projects selected as the winners of the 2011 Knight News Challenge. Now in its fifth year, this media-innovation contest included $1 million in support from Google. As you’ll see in the full list of winners, these initiatives come from organizations large and small and are reminders that entrepreneurship can be sparked anywhere. Here are just a few examples of the creative ways the journalism community around the world is merging traditional skills with an online landscape:

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, OpenBlock Rural will use its seed money to work with local governments and community newspapers across the state to collect, aggregate and publish data.

In Virginia, the Miller Center Foundation’s State Decoded will serve as a platform to display state codes, court decisions and information from legislative tracking services to make government more understandable to the average citizen.

The Chicago Tribune will collaborate with the Investigative Editors & Reporters organization and The Spokesman-Review on a set of open-source, web-based tools that make it easier for journalists to use and analyze data.

Liverpool, U.K.-based ScraperWiki will bring its experiences with public data to journalism camps in 12 U.S. states.

Chile’s El Mostrador will develop an editorial and crowdsourced database to bring greater transparency to potential conflicts of interest.

Ushahidi will build off its past crisis efforts to improve information-verification across email, Twitter, web feeds and text messages.

Other winning proposals tell rich multimedia stories, bridge the gap between traditional and citizen media and further improve the utility of data to journalists. Our sister program in partnership with the International Press Institute is also well underway. The entries in that competition are now in and the winners will be announced later this summer. We look forward to seeing the impacts these initiatives have on digital journalism and hope they encourage continued experimentation and innovation at the grassroots level.

Posted by Jim Gerber, Director, Strategic Partnerships, News

Rededicating the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial

Google News Blog — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Posted by Sean Carlson, Global Communications & Public Affairs

Outside 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., the front pages of newspapers from all 50 U.S. states mark the entrance to the Newseum. Inside the lobby, a gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs confronts visitors with moments of triumph and tragedy captured on camera. The museum’s corridors display exhibit after exhibit highlighting the role of journalism and journalists throughout history.

One of the Newseum’s most moving tributes is its Journalists Memorial, a wall of glass paneling imprinted with the names of more than 2,000 people around the world who have died while reporting the news. Nearby kiosks narrate their stories, an online database enables anybody with Internet access to learn more, and our new YouTube channel further remembers these fallen journalists through video.

Earlier this week, Krishna Bharat, founder and head of Google News, spoke at the memorial’s annual rededication ceremony. As you can watch in the video below, he began by reflecting on what motivated those being honored “to walk a path that was not paved with gold, but with danger.”

Over the course of his address, Krishna discussed the importance of a free press to society and of high-quality content to the web, observed the rising number of online journalists and bloggers coming under attack, and recounted incidents reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists. On a personal level, he also shared his memories as a boy in India and the influence of his grandfather in inspiring his appreciation for news.

“The journalists we remember and honor today chose lives that were full of meaning and purpose,” he concluded. “Let their stories not be forgotten. Let us repeat them. Let us re-tweet them. And let us print them on our pages so the world knows that silencing a journalist simply does not pay.”

To their families, friends, and colleagues, we extend our sympathy and respect.

Expanding Google News for more variety and multimedia

Google News Blog — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Posted by Chase Hensel, Associate Product Manager, Google News

Every day, Google News crawls through thousands of news articles to present you with the most relevant and recent stories. For a long time, we’ve realized that bringing relevant news to the surface is only part of the puzzle—it should also be easy to scan for stories of interest and dig deeper when you find them.

The newly expandable stories on Google News in the U.S., released today, give you greater story diversity with less clutter.

Now you can easily see more content, see less of what you don’t use and have a more streamlined experience:

Click-to-expand: Each story cluster is collapsed down to one headline with the exception of the top story. When something grabs you, click nearby anywhere but the title to expand the story box.
Labeled diversity: For stories you’ve expanded, you’ll see genre labels for some of the additional articles that explain why they were chosen and how they add value. For example, you might see something labeled as an “Opinion” piece or an indication that an article is “In Depth.”
Multimedia and more: Within each expanded story box, you’ll find a sliding bar of videos and photos, links to related sections and easier-to-use sharing options, so you can quickly digest the sights and sounds of a news story, dig into different types of publications and share what you find interesting with one click.
Personalized top stories: The Top Stories section is expanded to six or more stories from three to give you more topic diversity. The first three stories remain unpersonalized and the same as before. The rest may be personalized based on your interests. To personalize your Google News experience you can click on “Edit” under “News for you.” You can choose the “Standard Edition” if you don’t want personalization.
Less is more: The default view is now the popular “One Column” (formerly “Section”) view. We merged List View into Top Stories, as described above. You can still switch to “Two Column” view, which resembles classic Google News.

We hope you like these changes—please share your feedback and visit our Help Center to learn more.

Introducing “News near you” on Google News for mobile

Google News Blog — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Posted by Navneet Singh, Product Manager - Google News

Google News for mobile lets you keep up with the latest news, wherever you are. Today we’re excited to announce a new feature in the U.S. English edition called “News near you” that surfaces news relevant to the city you’re in and surrounding areas.

Location-based news first became available in Google News in 2008, and today there’s a local section for just about any city, state or country in the world with coverage from thousands of sources. We do local news a bit differently, analyzing every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.

Now you can find local news on your smartphone. Here’s an example of a “News near you” mobile section automatically created for someone in Topeka, Kansas:

To use this feature, visit Google News from the browser of your Android smartphone or iPhone. If this is the first time you are visiting Google News on your phone since this feature became available, a pop-up will ask you if you want to share your location. If you say yes, news relevant to your location will appear in a new section called “News near you” which will be added at the bottom of the homepage. You can reorganize the sections later via the personalization page.

You can turn off the feature at any time either by hiding the section in your personalization settings or by adjusting your mobile browser settings. Please visit the Help Center for further details.

So, go to news.google.com from your smartphone and get the latest news from wherever you are.

Google News and the Coverage of Bin Laden

Google News Blog — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Founder and Head - Google News

Google News was born in the aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. An unprecedented act of terrorism on U.S. soil, by a foreign militant group led by Osama Bin Laden, changed the course of history. People around the world were trying to comprehend what had just happened, and its implications to public safety, foreign policy, financial markets, and their own lives. Much of that exploration happened online.

At Google we realized that our ability to display links to the freshest and most relevant news was limited by a fundamental problem: fresh news lacked hyperlinks. Google’s ranking depended on links from other authors on the web. Fresh news, by definition, was too fresh to accumulate such links. A new importance signal was needed.

I realized that if Google could compute how many news sources were covering the underlying story at a given point in time, we could then estimate how important the story was. Thus, “Storyrank” was invented. This insight led to a ranking that combined the editorial wisdom of many editors on the web in real time. In addition to making search better it led to Google News - a display of stories in the news ranked automatically by an algorithm. This also allowed us to group news articles by story, thus providing visual structure and giving users access to diverse perspectives from around the world in one place.

After 10 years Mr. Bin Laden is in the news again. The story of the killing of Bin Laden has taken the online world by storm. This time, relevant coverage from around the world is just a click away, in an automatically compiled Google News cluster with more than 80,000 sources.

We have certainly come a long way in the last decade. Indeed, Google News now has over 70 editions in over 30 languages, and sends over 1 billion clicks a month to news publishers worldwide. Additionally, 1 out of 6 web searches on Google includes a set of news results, which are computed with the help of Storyrank. This helps bring coverage of the most important news story matching the query to the top of the ranking.

In the last 10 years there has been a lot of learning, iteration, and innovation in our team. And most importantly, we have acquired a loyal audience of news enthusiasts, who appreciate diversity and the ability to access multiple points of view on a story. To our users we would like to say “Thank You!”

We wanted to share with you some of the news coverage of the death of Bin Laden. Here is a sample of 100 links to news articles from representative sources worldwide:

ABC News - Abril - Agenzia Giornalistica Italia - ANSA.it - Associated Press - Atlanta Journal Constitution - Baltimore Sun - BBC News - Billboard - Bloomberg - Boston Globe - Boston Herald - BusinessWeek - CBC.ca - CBS News - CBSSports - Chicago Sun-Times - Chicago Tribune - Christian Science Monitor - CNET - CNN - Computerworld - Corriere della Sera - Dallas Morning News - derStandard.at - Detroit Free Press - E! Online - El Pais (Colombia) - El País (España) - El Universal (Venezuela) - ESPN - Forbes - Fox News - Globe and Mail - Ha'aretz - Hindustan Times - Huffington Post - InformationWeek - Jerusalem Post - Jewish Telegraphic Agency - Kansas City Star - La Repubblica - La Stampa - Le Point - Los Angeles Times - MarketWatch - MLB.com - MSNBC - MTV - National Geographic - National Post - NDTV - New York Daily News - New York Times - New Yorker - Newsday - Newsweek - NFL News - NPR - NZZ Online - O Globo - PC Magazine - PCWorld - People Magazine - Philadelphia Inquirer - Politico - Reuters - RollingStone - Salt Lake Tribune - San Francisco Chronicle - San Jose Mercury News - Seattle Post Intelligencer - SI.com - Slate Magazine - Spiegel Online - Sydney Morning Herald - Telegraph.co.uk - The Atlantic - The Economist - The Guardian - The Hindu - TIME - Times of India - Toronto Sun - U.S. News & World Report - Us Magazine - USA Today - Vancouver Sun - Vanity Fair - Voice of America - Wall Street Journal - Washington Post - WELT ONLINE - Wired News - Yahoo! Sports - ZDNet - العربية ن - الجزيرة - 朝日新聞 - 読売新聞

For those you who enjoy digging into data, here is a much larger list of over 150,000 links to news articles mentioning Osama Bin Laden over the last 5 days (May 1-5, 2011).

One of the many lessons I learned from 9/11 is that the world is highly connected. We live in a global society crisscrossed by virtual and physical dependencies, where knowledge is power and ignorance has consequences. This is a world where knowing what is happening to people in other parts of world, and understanding their circumstances and beliefs, matters more than ever -- because their actions will ultimately affect our lives. Tools such as Google News, which bring order to information and make search smarter can help us cope with the complexity of news and understand the big picture.

Further, as the wave of revolutions in North Africa demonstrates, online information does not merely reflect world events -- it can even cause them. These are indeed exciting times for those of us who work in the news space and get to witness the impact of journalism on society first hand!

Automatic Personalization and Recommended Sections in Google News

Google News Blog — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Posted by Lucian Cionca, Software Engineer

Last summer we redesigned Google News with new personalization features that let you tell us which subjects and sources you’d like to see more or less often. Starting today -- if you’re logged in -- you may also find stories based on articles you’ve clicked on before.

For signed-in users in the Personalized U.S. Edition, “News for You” will now include stories based on your news-related web history. For example, if you click on a lot of articles about baseball, we'll make sure that you get a chance to see breaking baseball stories. We found in testing that more users clicked on more stories when we added this automatic personalization, sending more traffic to publishers.

Also for signed-in users, we’ve introduced “Recommended Sections” in the side column that suggests topics you can add to your news page as custom sections, based on stories you’ve clicked on before.

If you don’t want to see personalized news based on your Web History, you have a few options:

Click on the “Standard U.S. Edition” link at the bottom of Google News. This will not delete any of your News settings or Web History. It will switch you to an unpersonalized version of Google News for the duration of your current session. (To switch back, click on “Personalized U.S. Edition”.)
Delete your web history. (Google News may take some time to update.)
Log out of your Google Account.

To learn more, please visit our Help Center. And of course we'd love your feedback.

Update 6/6/2011:
We've extended the scope of automatic personalization to include Google News's "Local" and "Spotlight" sections. Since Spotlight has always been about serendipity, we are personalizing it with a light touch. As ever, if you'd prefer to see an unpersonalized edition, you can still switch to "Standard U.S. Edition," log out, or remove your web history.

Beyond Telegrams: Congratulations, Pulitzer Prize winners

Google News Blog — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:09:00 +0000

Posted by Dan Hirsch, Google News Support Team

Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced an impressive list of 13 prize winners and 29 finalists for excellent work in journalism and storytelling. These winners represent a wide array of incredible stories, such as The Los Angeles Times's multi-part series about government corruption in the small town of Bell, California, or The New Jersey Star Ledger's gripping tale of a mysterious boat wreck. We on the Google News team have nothing but respect and admiration for their fine work. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists.

The winners also reflect the rapidly changing and evolving world of journalism itself. Almost all the awards went to stories accompanied by a rich presentation of content beyond just the printed words. ProPublica's series "The Wall Street Money Machine" includes detailed timelines and succinct data visualization to better illustrate the troublesome financial practices that led to the economic meltdown. To tell the story of one family's struggle to find a cure for their son's rare medical condition, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel produced numerous videos and an interactive graphics detailing the mysterious disease's physiology.

This year, prize rules explicitly encouraged the use of visual information, multimedia or databases. In fact, for the first time in the Prize’s history, jurors were mandated to bring laptops to the judging.

This isn't the first rule update in the prizes' 95 years of history. For instance, nobody has won the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting since 1947. One recipient of the short-lived award was James Reston of The New York Times for his reporting from the 1945 Dumbarton Oaks Conference, a meeting between Allied Forces that laid the initial groundwork for the UN. Much of his reporting came from the acquisition of leaked cables from unsuspecting diplomats. Though reporting technology certainly has changed, this incident doesn’t sound so antiquated these days.

You can read one part of Reston's series here in Google News Archives as it appeared in The Montreal Gazette.

In expanding the short-lived category of Telegraphic Reporting to National Reporting and International Reporting, the Pulitzer Board must have suspected that technology for communicating over long distances would inevitably evolve. This year's prizes better reflect our current media environment, but it makes me wonder what the best in journalism will look like fifty years from now.

[Reporting from the age of the telegram c. 1940, from Life Photo Archive]

To search for the recent work of this year's Pulitizer Prize winner, you can use the Advanced News Search feature. Enter the name of the journalist whose work you're looking for in the "Author" field of our Advanced News Search page, or use the [author:] search operator in the News search bar. For an example of an [author:] search and to see the recent work of this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for distinguished criticism, click here.

New Google News for Opera Mini

Google News Blog — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:53:00 +0000

Posted by Arun Prasath, Tech Lead and Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager

While the Google News team has been hard at work redesigning our service for smartphones, we’ve also been thinking about our milllions of users around the world who access the web not from a smartphone, but from a feature phone, using Opera Mini as their browser.

So we have rolled out a redesigned Google News for Opera Mini in all 29 languages and 70 editions of Google News. This includes an enhanced homepage featuring richer snippets, thumbnail images, links to videos and section content without explicit navigation, a convenient search bar, comfortably spaced links and the ability to access your desktop personalization on your phone.

We hope that this will improve the news browsing experience for Opera Mini users around the world, including millions of people using a feature phone as the primary point of access for the web. See it here in the Indian Hindi and Nigerian English versions.

So, pick up your feature phone and point your Opera Mini browser to http://news.google.com to catch up on news anytime and anywhere. For more information or to share your feedback with us, please visit our Help Center.

Credit where credit is due

Google News Blog — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Weigle, Software Engineer, and Abe Epton, Publisher Technical Specialist

News publishers and readers both benefit when journalists get proper credit for their work. That can be difficult, with news spreading so quickly and many websites syndicating articles to others. That’s why we’re experimenting with two new metatags for Google News: syndication-source and original-source. Each of these metatags addresses a different scenario, but for both the aim is to allow publishers to take credit for their work and give credit to other journalists. Here’s how to use these metatags:

syndication-source indicates the preferred URL for a syndicated article. If two versions of an article are exactly the same, or only very slightly modified, we're asking publishers to use syndication-source to point us to the one they would like Google News to use. For example, if Publisher X syndicates stories to Publisher Y, both should put the following metatag on those articles:

original-source indicates the URL of the first article to report on a story. We encourage publishers to use this metatag to give credit to the source that broke the story. We recognize that this can sometimes be tough to determine. But the intent of this tag is to reward hard work and journalistic enterprise. For example, to credit the publication that broke a story you could use a metatag like this:

In both cases, it's perfectly valid for a metatag to point to the current page URL. It's also fine for there to be multiple original-source metatags on one page, to indicate a variety of original reporting leading up to the current article. If you’re not sure of the exact URL to provide in either case, just use the domain of the site that should be credited.

Although these metatags are already in use by our systems, you may not notice their impact right away. We'll need some time to observe their use "in the wild" before we can make the best use of them. But we're hopeful that this approach will help determine original authorship, and we encourage you to take advantage of them now.

To learn more about how these metatags work, and how you can implement them for your site, visit our Help Center article.

Update 2/11/11:

We've had a lot of interest in these meta tags, particularly in how the syndication-source tag relates to rel=canonical. After evaluating this feedback, we’ve updated our system to use rel=canonical instead of syndication-source, if both are specified.

If you know the full URL, rel=canonical is preferred, and you need not specify syndication-source.

If you know a partial URL, or just the domain name, continue using syndication-source.

We've also had people ask "why metatag instead of linktag"? We actually support both forms for the tag, and you can use either. However, we believe the linktag form is more in line with the spirit of the standard, and encourage new users to implement the linktag form rather than the metatag form we originally proposed.

Credit where credit is due

Google News Blog — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:00:00 +0000

syndication-source indicates the preferred URL for a syndicated article. If two versions of an article are exactly the same, or only very slightly modified, we're asking publishers to use syndication-source to point us to the one they would like Google News to use. For example, if Publisher X syndicates stories to Publisher Y, both should put the following metatag on those articles:

original-source indicates the URL of the first article to report on a story. We encourage publishers to use this metatag to give credit to the source that broke the story. We recognize that this can sometimes be tough to determine. But the intent of this tag is to reward hard work and journalistic enterprise. For example, to credit the publication that broke a story you could use a metatag like this:

Enhancements to Google News for smartphones

Google News Blog — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:45:00 +0000

Posted by Arun Prasath, Tech Lead, Google Mobile News

Last November, we redesigned Google News for mobile access on smartphones including Android, iPhone and Palm Pre. Today, we're globally rolling out new usability and visual enhancements that we hope will make browsing news on your smartphone easier.

We expanded the story space to make tapping on articles easier and more accurate. Tapping anywhere on an article headline or snippet opens it up, and clicking on a section heading opens up that topic section on your screen.

In addition, the default view of stories is now collapsed which reduces scrolling time. You can 'expand' a story by tapping on 'More sources', which brings you to related stories from other sources. The screenshots below show the collapsed and expanded view of a story.

Collapsed:

Expanded:

So, pick up your smartphone, point your browser to http://news.google.com, and catch up on news on the go.

Enhancements to Google News for smartphones

Google News Blog — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:45:00 +0000

$5 million to encourage innovation in digital journalism

Google News Blog — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:05:00 +0000

Posted by Nikesh Arora, President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development

Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy. So as media organizations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we’re eager to play our part on the technology side -- experimenting with new ways of presenting news online; providing tools like Google Maps and YouTube Direct to make websites more engaging for readers; and investing heavily in our digital platforms to enable publishers to generate more revenue.

But while we're mostly focused on working with news organizations to develop better products for users, we also believe it's crucial to encourage innovation at the grassroots level. That's why we’re giving $5 million in grants to non-profit organizations that are working to develop new approaches to journalism in the digital age. Our aim is to benefit news publishers of all sizes.

We've granted $2 million to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has a proven track record of supporting programs that drive innovation in journalism. It will use $1 million to support U.S. grant-making in this crucial area. The other $1 million will augment the Knight News Challenge, which is accepting funding proposals from anyone, anywhere in the world, until Dec. 1. Now in its fifth year, the News Challenge has supported projects like DocumentCloud, which aims to bring more investigative-reporting source material online so anyone can find and read it.

We’re eager to do even more internationally, so we will be investing the remaining $3 million in journalism projects in other countries through a similar partnership. Stay tuned for more details early next year.

We hope these grants will help new ideas blossom and encourage experimentation. As Thomas Edison once said, "When there's no experimenting, there's no progress. Stop experimenting and you go backward." We look forward to working with the journalism community to help digital news move forward.

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Shining a Spotlight on Video News

Google News Blog — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Posted by Natasha Mohanty, Google News Software Engineer

Today in the U.S. we’re launching a new section in Google News called "Spotlight Video" that showcases popular videos from news channels on YouTube like "NOVA: The Secret Life of Scientists: Jean Berko Gleason" from PBS.

Google News has always helped users find recent articles from a wide variety of sources. But we recognize there are other types of stories that our users are interested in. So last year, we created the Spotlight section to feature stories of more lasting interest. Like the rest of Google News, Spotlight articles are selected by our computer algorithms, but they aren't your typical breaking news. Instead you'll find stories of enduring appeal such as feature articles, investigative reporting and opinion pieces. In fact, Spotlight quickly became one of our most popular sections.

So now we’re shining the spotlight on videos too. In the right-hand column you can find the new Spotlight Video section and check out recently popular news clips, like "Singer-producer Bruno Mars Continues to Rise" from the Associated Press.

If your news organization isn't already making its video content available on YouTube and Google News, we encourage you to get started. More information on how to submit your news videos to Google News can also be found in the News Publishers' Help Center. And here are some additional tips on news search engine optimization.

Side note: today you may have noticed we also modified the left-hand navigation. Now, as you scroll down the page, the navigation menu will move with you. This way, you can always see the sectional and hot topic quick links.

Please tell us what you think and we’ll keep working to improve Google News for you.

Shining a Spotlight on Video News

Google News Blog — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Extending the Associated Press as Hosted News partner

Google News Blog — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Posted by Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager

We’ve extended our existing licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. We look forward to future collaborations, including on ways Google and AP can work together to create a better user experience and new revenue opportunities. You can read more about our hosted news agreements in this post and this one.

Extending the Associated Press as Hosted News partner

Google News Blog — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Google News changes reflect your feedback

Google News Blog — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:02:00 +0000

Posted by Chris Beckmann, Product Manager

Two weeks ago we gave the Google News homepage a new look and feel with enhanced customization, discovery and sharing. This redesign was our biggest since Google News launched in beta in 2002.

Some of you told us that you really liked it, especially how the "News for you" section lets you see a stream of articles tailored to the interests you specify. The positive usage data we saw during our months-long tests of the redesign has continued since we introduced it to all users of the U.S. English edition, and hundreds of thousands of you have already customized your Google News homepages. But some of you wrote in to say you missed certain aspects of the previous design, such as the ability to see results grouped by section (U.S., Business, etc.) in two columns.

At Google, we’re all about launching and iterating, so we've been making improvements to the design in response to your feedback. For example, we're now showing the entire cluster of articles for each story, rather than expanding the cluster when you hover your mouse over it. We've given you the ability to hide the weather forecast from your local news section. We made the option to switch between List view and Section view more obvious. And today we’re adding a third option in "News for you": Two-column view, which shows the three top stories from each section and looks like this:

A key goal of the redesign was to give you more ways to personalize your Google News, and these changes add even more choices. A heartfelt thanks to all of you who have shared your thoughts with us. Please keep letting us know what you think, and we’ll keep working to make Google News even better.

Google News changes reflect your feedback

Google News Blog — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:02:00 +0000

The Magic of a Game 7

Google News Blog — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:25:00 +0000

Posted by David Smydra, Google News Online Team

Growing up a diehard Pistons fan in Detroit, Michigan, I was taught two things about the sport of basketball. First, always cheer against the Boston Celtics. Second, always cheer against the Los Angeles Lakers. Fortunately, this was an easy thing for me to do: the Pistons beat both teams en route to its first NBA championship in 1989.

Tonight, however, the Lakers and Celtics complete their twelfth championship match-up in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals. This will be just the fifth time that a Lakers-Celtics Finals has reached seven games. And of course I know this by browsing through Google News Archive Search.

I can read about how Celtics coach Red Auerbach was "feeling a bit cocky" in the 1962 NBA Finals. Or about how the Celtics became the first major professional sports team to win eight consecutive championships by dispatching the Lakers in 1966. Or how Wilt Chamberlain wanted to beat Bill Russell's Celtics "in the worst way" in 1969. (He didn’t; the Celtics won again.) Or about how Lakers coach Pat Riley wanted to make history in the 1984 NBA Finals by beating the Celtics in Game 7, on the road, in the old Boston Garden. (Yet again, the Lakers lost.)

While the Celtics have history on their side, this year’s Lakers can boast a better overall record and are the defending champions, having won the 2009 Finals. Then again, they lost in the 2008 NBA Finals to...the Boston Celtics.

So it should be a great game, and well worth following. For that, be sure to check Google News.

As for my prediction, what can I say? I’m still recovering from the fact that the Pistons had their worst record in sixteen years and didn’t even make the playoffs. I guess it’s impossible for both teams to lose, huh?

Krishna Bharat discusses the past and future of Google News

Google News Blog — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:07:00 +0000

Posted by Chris Gaither, Senior Manager, News Industry Relations

Krishna Bharat invented Google News more than eight years ago. His aim: help people easily find multiple perspectives on the news of the day by using computers to group together links to similar stories. Aside from a two-year stint in India to start our research and development operations there, Krishna has been working to improve Google News ever since.

Krishna visited the IJ-7 “innovation journalism” conference at Stanford University last week and held an on-stage conversation with David Nordfors, executive director of Stanford’s Center for Innovation and Communication. Below you can watch video of the conversation and hear from Krishna about why he created Google News, how it works, where it’s headed and why he’s optimistic about the future of professional journalism.

Making your video news more discoverable: best practices for news publishers

Google News Blog — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:20:00 +0000

Posted by Benoit Lafortune, Sr. Strategist Google News, and Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager

Video has always been a unique storytelling tool, especially useful when reporting the news. From raw, citizen-reported videos from the streets of Tehran, to student documentaries highlighting under-reported issues in local communities, or investigative reporting done by professional news outlets, just about every type of news video can now be found on YouTube. Video is also tightly integrated into the Google News experience, providing users different ways to consume and enjoy news, while giving news publishers the opportunity to reach a greater and more diverse audience.

We are working to make it easier to get your video content indexed in Google News, but ensuring it’s found in a timely fashion is another matter. So we thought we’d share six best practices for how news publishers can increase the discoverability of their news videos.

1. Timely uploads
Videos should be uploaded as quickly as possible -- this will help them reach the news homepage faster and be grouped with the most recent articles.

2. One story per video
Instead of having one video that contains multiple segments covering several different stories of the day, it's a better user experience (and easier for us to index), when there is one story per video, and the video title is specific (not something generic like “Breaking News”). At the very least, the description of the video should match the first story in the video.

3. Categorization
If you are providing general news coverage, select YouTube category “News & Politics” (which is youtube_category_id 25) when uploading your video. If you have multiple channels, clearly identify each category (politics, business, entertainment, sports, etc.).

4. More detailed descriptions
Similar to the first paragraph of a news article, descriptions of the news video should convey the who, what, when, where, and why of the story in a few sentences -- the more detail you can supply, the better.

5. Rich tags
Another way to convey the content of the video is using the keyword tags. Providing keywords that might not be in the description gives us more knowledge of what the video is about. Especially helpful are proper nouns: the names of the people, places, companies, etc. mentioned in the video.

6. Make it Embeddable
Be sure your video is embeddable on other sites since this is currently a technical requirement for being displayed in Google News. Additionally, if your videos are geo-blocked in certain regions, they will not appear in Google News.

If your news organization isn’t already making its video content available on YouTube and Google News, we encourage you to get started. More information on how to submit your news videos to Google News can also be found in the News Publishers Help Center, and you can watch this video for additional tips on news search engine optimization.

Bringing Living Stories to WordPress

Google News Blog — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:58:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Zhang, Software Engineer

For the last few months we’ve been talking with publishers about ways to make it easier for them to use Living Stories, our experimental format for displaying news coverage, on their own websites. Today we’re releasing a Living Stories plugin and theme for WordPress. Now anyone who publishes through WordPress can use the plugin to organize coverage of an ongoing event on a single dynamic page.

We first showcased Living Stories in December through a two-month-long experiment with the New York Times and Washington Post. We got great feedback from both readers and publishers. Our next step was to open-source the Living Stories format, allowing publishers to build on it using Google’s AppEngine infrastructure. We then released a version of the code that runs independent of our infrastructure. Since then, a number of publications have shared their ideas for ways we can offer additional tools to help them create Living Stories.

The WordPress plugin is a direct result of those conversations. We hope the plug-and-play solution will make it easy for you to get a Living Story up and running in almost no time at all. Head to our documentation page for detailed instructions. If you have questions or feedback, feel free to leave us a note in our help forum. We’re looking forward to reading your stories and seeing how the Living Stories format evolves on WordPress.

Two more weeks to update your Google News Sitemap

Google News Blog — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:05:00 +0000

Posted by Andy Golding, Google News Software Engineer

Almost five months ago, we announced a redesign for our Google News Sitemap. We wanted to give publishers plenty of advance notice so they could make a smooth transition to the new format.

This transition period will end on May 4, when we'll discontinue supporting all old-style Google News Sitemaps. If you are a publisher and haven't already shifted your Google News sitemap to the new format, we urge you to do so by following these instructions as soon as possible. This update is key to avoid interruption in crawling your content and allow our crawler to capture all necessary information about your articles.

If you've already made the changes to your sitemap, we thank you. There is no need to worry about this update. If you're interested in learning more about Google News sitemaps, we encourage you to read this section of our Help Center and submit a sitemap for your articles in Google News. You may also be interested in checking out our Help Forum where other publishers have shared useful tips and discussed other Sitemaps-related questions.

Don't forget to update your Google News Sitemaps. There are only two more weeks to go!

Eric Schmidt discusses innovation with news editors

Google News Blog — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:48:00 +0000

Posted by Chris Gaither, Senior Manager, Global Communications & Public Affairs

This week, hundreds of newsroom leaders from across the country are gathered in Washington DC for the American Society of News Editors’ annual conference. The theme of this year's event is "ideas," and Eric Schmidt shared many of his as the opening speaker. He spoke about some of the big trends that are shaping the Internet, such as the rise of mobile and cloud computing, and some lessons he has learned about how to navigate the Web’s constant pace of change.

He also talked about the importance of journalism to functioning democracies and encouraged the group to work together -- as well as with technology partners like Google -- to find new ways to reach and engage audiences, tell important stories and build thriving businesses online.

You can watch Eric's speech, which we've posted on YouTube, below. And if you’re interested in reading or contributing to the discussion about the future of news, check out the unofficial conference blog and #asne10 on Twitter.

Open-sourcing the Living Stories format

Google News Blog — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:04:00 +0000

Posted by Neha Singh, Software Engineer, and Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager

For the past two months, small teams of reporters and editors from the New York Times and Washington Post have been experimenting with Living Stories, a new format for covering news on the web. Using this technology platform, we can capture hundreds of developments as events unfold on a single dynamic page so that readers have many ways to easily digest the information. Living Stories has helped the Times enlighten readers on such subjects as global warming, the Afghanistan war, the N.F.L. playoffs and executive compensation. The Post has used it to report on health care reform, the Redskins' season and the overhaul of the D.C. school system.

Since we launched this proof-of-concept test on Google Labs in December, 75% of people who sent us feedback said they preferred the Living Stories format to the traditional online news article. Users also spent a significant amount of time exploring stories. This tells us there's a strong appetite for great journalism displayed in a compelling way.

In addition to the positive input from visitors, we've also heard from publishers interested in telling their own stories through the format. So we think it's time for the next stage of this experiment: releasing Living Stories more broadly to see what you can do with it. Today we're open-sourcing the code so all developers can build their own Living Story pages. (Here's the open-source documentation for technical details; read our Google News Help Forum to ask and answer general support questions.) Now that we're shifting into this public phase of the experiment, the Times and the Post are going to wind down their work on the version hosted on Google Labs. We'd like to thank them for embarking on this stage of the project with us. We're looking forward to continuing to work with them, and many other publishers, on Living Stories as well as other projects that help to advance how news is presented online.

In coming months, we're going to look into creating software tools that make Living Stories even easier to use for news organizations. Until then, we can't wait to see what fascinating works of journalism developers, reporters and editors, working together, create using the open-sourced Living Stories code.

Starring stories in Google News

Google News Blog — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Posted by Jude Britto, Software Engineer, Google News

A couple of months back, we launched the Custom Sections Directory feature in Google News to allow users to set up sections on topics of their interest, and to share them with other users.

Today, we are giving users even more options for following stories. Users can mark a story cluster by clicking on the star next to it, like they can with messages in Gmail and items in Google Reader. When you star a story in Google News, it's one way to let us know that you're interested in that subject. When there are significant updates, we will alert you by putting the headline in bold so you can get more information. You can also follow your 20 most recent starred stories in the "Starred" section of Google News.

We hope you enjoy the new feature and welcome your feedback.

Google News Comes Back For More

Google News Blog — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:53:00 +0000

Posted by Andy Golding and Kiran Gunda, Software Engineers

If you read news online, you've probably noticed that articles aren't static. They often change over time, to reflect things like typo fixes, shifts in emphasis, new information or corrections of previous mistakes. Sometimes they even switch URLs, or become unavailable after a certain period of time. As a human being, reading at most a few dozen articles a day, this is no big deal.

But if you happen to be, say, a news search engine that crawls hundreds of articles at thousands of sites every minute, this presents a unique set of challenges. How do you balance looking for new content against the need to update older content? How can you make sure the content is fresh, doesn't link to dead pages or display headlines that have been changed by the publisher?

To deal with these issues, Google News has implemented a recrawl feature that allows us to focus on getting the newest articles around while still ensuring that we're displaying the most up-to-date information. From the moment we discover a new article, we'll keep revisiting it looking for changes. Since we've noticed that most changes to articles occur just after they're published, we revisit articles most frequently in the first day after we've found them. In some cases, we'll even revisit articles we had trouble crawling the first time around. After that, we visit them less often. Either way, we try hard to present users with the freshest news. (We bet whoever wrote "Dewey Defeats Truman" wishes they had recrawl!)

For readers, this feature is intended to reduce the number of outdated headlines and dead links you might find. And for publishers, rest assured that we'll be back to find your latest stories and updates as soon as we can.

Fast Flip now available on Google News homepage

Google News Blog — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:23:00 +0000

Posted by Jack Hebert, Matthew Watson and Corrie Scalisi, Software Engineers

Today you may notice a change to the Google News home page: Near the bottom, we're now displaying stories from Google Fast Flip, the article-reading service we launched in September. Fast Flip is still in Google Labs, so we'll continue to experiment with the format. But so far we've found that the speed and visual nature of the service encourages readers to look at many articles and, for the ones that catch their interest, click through to the story publishers' websites.

In December we added more than 50 newspapers, magazines, web outlets news wires and TV and radio broadcasters, bringing the total number of news sources discoverable in Fast Flip to more than 90. Encouraged by the positive feedback we've received from users and partners, we decided to expose the service to more potential readers by integrating it with the U.S. English version of Google News. As always, we welcome your thoughts.

The holiday season and Google News Archive Search

Google News Blog — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:42:00 +0000

Posted by David Smydra, Google News Online Team

Crowded shopping malls, radio stations pumping songs about sleigh bells and chestnuts, inclement weather from coast to coast -- all signs point to one explanation. We're smack in the middle of the holiday season.

Whichever holidays you observe, you might be surprised to learn of another one to add to the roster. Two hundred eighteen years ago today, the founders ratified the Bill of Rights, which the United States officially celebrates every December 15 as U.S. Bill of Rights Day. We have President Franklin D. Roosevelt to thank for officially creating the holiday, which he inaugurated in 1941, on the 150th anniversary of the document's ratification.

I took a spin through Google News Archive Search to learn more. Searching for "Bill of Rights Day 1941," I was able to drill down to autumn of that year, where I hoped to find articles explaining how the holiday took shape. Sure enough, the St. Petersburg Times ran an Associated Press story on November 29, 1941, quoting a proclamation from President Roosevelt. In what appears to be a clear reference to the events of World War II, Roosevelt mentions the "privileges lost in other continents and countries," and how Americans "can now appreciate their meaning to those people who enjoyed them once and now no longer can." And so December 15 would become "a day of mobilization for freedom and for human rights, a day of remembrance of the democratic and peaceful action by which these rights were gained, a day of reassessment of their present meaning and their living worth."

Little more than a week later, of course, arrived "a date which will live in infamy," the attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into the war.

So when Bill of Rights Day arrived eight days later, the holiday had renewed meaning. Once again, in the St. Petersburg Times, you could find a full page featuring another proclamation from Roosevelt, the full Bill of Rights reprinted for readers, and a picture of Roosevelt with New York Mayor Fiorello Henry La Guardia. And the day after the holiday, this write-up summarized various ways that the country marked the occasion, including Chicago school girls reading the Bill of Rights "publicly at State and Madison streets."

It's interesting to see how the meaning and observance of different holidays continue to change, sometimes even just days after they have been created.

Same Protocol, More Options for News Publishers

Google News Blog — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:10:00 +0000

Posted by Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager

There are more than 25,000 publishers from around the world in Google News today. That's because Google News is a great source of readers, sending publishers about 1 billion clicks every month. Each of those clicks is an opportunity for publishers, allowing them to show ads, sell subscriptions and introduce readers to the great content they produce every day. While we think this offers a tremendous opportunity for any publisher who wants new readers, publishers are the ones who create the content and they're in control of it. If they decide they don't want to be in Google, it's easy to do. Today, we're making it even easier with a web crawler specifically for Google News.

Publishers have always had the ability to block Google from including their content in Google's index. How? With something called Robots Exclusion Protocol (or REP) - a web-wide standard supported by all major search engines and any reputable company that crawls the web. When our crawler arrives at any site, it checks to see if there's a robots.txt file to make sure we have permission to crawl the site. With this file, or similar REP directives on specific pages, publishers can block their entire site, certain sections or individual pages. They can also give instructions on how they want us to index their content, such as telling us to exclude images or snippets of text. Furthermore, they can apply different instructions to different crawlers, giving access to some while blocking others.

The new Google News web crawler extends these controls to Google News. If they wanted to, it's always been easy for publishers to keep their content out of Google News and still remain in Google Search. They just had to fill out a simple contact form in our Help Center. Now, with the news-specific crawler, if a publisher wants to opt out of Google News, they don't even have to contact us - they can put instructions just for user-agent Googlebot-News in the same robots.txt file they have today. In addition, once this change is fully in place, it will allow publishers to do more than just allow/disallow access to Google News. They'll also be able to apply the full range of REP directives just to Google News. Want to block images from Google News, but not from Web Search? Go ahead. Want to include snippets in Google News, but not in Web Search? Feel free. All this will soon be possible with the same standard protocol that is REP.

Our users shouldn't notice any difference. Google News will keep helping people discover the news they're looking for, different perspectives from across the world and new sources of information they might not otherwise have found.

While this means even more control for publishers, the effect of opting out of News is the same as it's always been. It means that content won't be in Google News or in the parts of Google that are powered by the News index. For example, if a publisher opts out of Google News, but stays in Web Search, their content will still show up as natural web search results, but they won't appear in the block of news results that sometimes shows up in Web Search, called Universal search, since those come from the Google News index.

Most people put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose to exclude their material from Google. But we respect publishers' wishes. If publishers don't want their websites to appear in web search results or in Google News, we want to give them easy ways to remove it. We're excited about this change and will start rolling it out today. You can learn more about the details of this change on our Webmaster Central blog. If you see any problems or have any questions, please let us know.

Google and paid content

Google News Blog — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:35:00 +0000

Posted by Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager

As newspapers consider charging for access to their online content, some publishers have asked: Should we put up pay walls or keep our articles in Google News and Google Search? In fact, they can do both - the two aren't mutually exclusive. There are a few ways we work with publishers to make their subscription content discoverable. Today we're updating one of them, so we thought it would be a good time to remind publishers about some of their options.

Google has strict policies against what's known as cloaking: showing one web page to the crawler that indexes it but then a different page to a user. We do this so that users aren't deceived into clicking through to a site that's not what they were expecting. While the anti-cloaking policies are important for users, they do create some challenges for publishers who charge for content. Our crawlers can't fill out a registration or payment form to see what's behind a site's paywall, but they need access to the information in order to index it.

One way we overcome this is through a program called First Click Free. Participating publishers allow the crawler to index their subscription content, then allow users who find one of those articles through Google News or Google Search to see the full page without requiring them to register or subscribe. The user's first click to the content is free, but when a user clicks on additional links on the site, the publisher can show a payment or registration request. First Click Free is a great way for publishers to promote their content and for users to check out a news source before deciding whether to pay. Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free. Now, we've updated the program so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing. If you're a Google user, this means that you may start to see a registration page after you've clicked through to more than five articles on the website of a publisher using First Click Free in a day. We think this approach still protects the typical user from cloaking, while allowing publishers to focus on potential subscribers who are accessing a lot of their content on a regular basis.

In addition to First Click Free, we offer another solution: We will crawl, index and treat as "free" any preview pages - generally the headline and first few paragraphs of a story - that they make available to us. This means that our crawlers see the exact same content that will be shown for free to a user. Because the preview page is identical for both users and the crawlers, it's not cloaking. We will then label such stories as "subscription" in Google News. The ranking of these articles will be subject to the same criteria as all sites in Google, whether paid or free. Paid content may not do as well as free options, but that is not a decision we make based on whether or not it's free. It's simply based on the popularity of the content with users and other sites that link to it.

These are two of the ways we allow publishers to make their subscription content discoverable, and we're going to keep talking with publishers to refine these methods. After all, whether you're offering your content for free or selling it, it's crucial that people find it. Google can help with that.

A new face to Google News Sitemaps

Google News Blog — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:13:00 +0000

Posted by Andy Golding, Google News Software Engineer

Given the feedback we get from publishers, we've redesigned our interface to make Google News Sitemaps more flexible and easier to submit. [As a reminder, a Google News Sitemap is a file created by publishers which gives you even more control over the content you submit to Google News].

We're currently in the midst of an exciting transition period and need your help to avoid interruption in crawling your content.

To facilitate this transition, we'll have a six-month grandfather period during which you can continue to use the old format for any existing Sitemap that was originally submitted using the old format. Any new Sitemap submission must follow the new format. Please take a few minutes to make the shift. If no change is made by the end of the grandfather period, you'll no longer receive the benefits of having your articles crawled via a Google News Sitemap.

If your site is already included in Google News and you haven't submitted a Google News Sitemap yet, we encourage you to do so in order to manage your news content. Please visit our updated instructions for details on how to start using the new format.

Main changes in this release:

Publication Label Pulldown Menu: The publication label pulldown menu no longer exists in Webmaster Tools. Instead, you should now attach the equivalent information to each individual article in your Sitemap, as described below.

Note: For previously-submitted Sitemaps in the old format, we will "remember" the last publication label you selected from the pulldown menu and use that; however, please update to the new format as soon as you can.

New tags: In place of the publication menu, there are now three tags that you can attach to each article in your Sitemap giving the equivalent information:

: Specifies the name and language of the publication that the article occurs in. Required.

: Specifies the nature of the article as a comma-separated list chosen from: PressRelease, Satire, Blog, OpEd, Opinion, and UserGenerated. Required whenever any of these properties applies to the article.

: Specifies the accessibility of the article. Choices: Subscription or Registration. Required whenever either of the choices applies.

this help article

Title tags: Article titles can be added using the tag to help us identify the right title for your articles.</li><br /><li><strong>More options to resubmit your sitemap:</strong> In addition to re-submitting your Google News Sitemap through your Webmaster Tools account, you can now resubmit it two other ways: robots.txt or ping. Note: The first time you submit your Sitemap, always use Webmaster Tools.</li></ul><br />Check out <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=161989">this page</a> for more details on the transition process, and please <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/static.py?page=contact_policy.cs">let us know</a> if you have questions about your Google News Sitemap. Publishers can also visit the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news/label?lid=20b16e784d4069a3&hl=en">Sitemaps section</a> of our User Help Forum, a place to ask questions, and interact with other users and Google guides.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Create and Share custom News sections</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:03:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Sharad Jain and Nilesh Agrawal, Google News Software Engineers</span><br /><br />Today, Google News is making it even easier to follow the latest stories on whatever subjects interest you. We are happy to announce our <a href="http://www.google.com/news/directory">Custom sections directory</a>, which gives users of some of our English-language editions the expanded ability to create comprehensive sections to put on their Google News home page or share with other users. <br /><br />One of the great things about online news is the ability to filter by topics. Google News has long recognized this so we've allowed users to track articles based on keywords of their choice. But it has been a little tricky at times. For example, to follow news about topics related to outer space, you would have to create a pretty complex filter.<br /><br />Now, if you're using Google News and can't find the perfect section, just <a href="http://news.google.com/news/directory/createsection?cf=all&hl=en">create your own</a>! You can do that by adding the relevant keywords. Then, if you are happy with the resulting section, you can publish it to a directory so others can benefit.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SvHtE3DzYFI/AAAAAAAAAK4/hpv5Hed3QS0/s1600-h/Space.jpg"></a><br /><br />We have created an initial set of sections to get you started. There's one on <a href="http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&csid=81fd56484d395619">Space</a>, and others on topics such as <a href="http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&csid=745e667edf01ab31">U.S. Foreign Policy</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&csid=08e227de2dd99c70">Global Trade</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&csid=83e7de632b7fad38">Solar Power</a>, and <a href="http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&csid=615ae121f2642223">Hollywood</a>. If you like them, click on "Add this section" and they'll appear on your home page.<br /><br />The feature is currently available in the Google News editions for Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and we look forward to expanding it soon.<br /><br />Please visit our Help Center for more information on how to <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=150416">subscribe to custom sections</a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=150415">create them</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Local news now available in France</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Mikey Levine, Software engineer</span><br /><br />Last year we <a id="nue." href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-news-is-local.html" title="announced" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); ">announced</a> the launch of local news in the U.S., and <a id="zzyr" href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/local-news-in-more-places_27.html" title="later">later</a> in the UK, India, Canada and Germany. Today we're delighted to let you know that we're making this feature available for France.<br /><br />The Local news section lets you keep track of current events in your area. Once implemented, the top stories for a given area will be at the top of your results, and our rankings also take into account a publication's location to promote local sources for each story.<br /><br />We work hard to improve our algorithm, including its ability to understand the relevant locations for a news story and the location of the source that reports a story. We also train our algorithm to detect when a news article is reporting about a particular location and when it's not. The city of Paris (also a world celebrity) has proven particularly challenging in this respect.<br /><br />How can I add Local News to my Google News homepage?<br />To get started, look for the local section on your front page and enter your city or postal code in the local search bar, shown here:<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">If you don't see this section, you can also set up your local news by clicking "Personalize this page" on the top right of the page. On the menu that comes up, click "Add a local section":</div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Su8Bzvm42EI/AAAAAAAAAKo/EOdaco6lNe0/s1600-h/File-1.jpeg" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align:left; ">Once you've clicked on this local section link, you'll see a place to enter a postal code or city. 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. </div><br />As always, we're always working to improve our product, and appreciate <a id="hbl-" href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news?hl=en" title="your feedback" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); ">your feedback</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Highlighting the diversity of content in Google News</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:07:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Rawan Hakeem, Google News Online Team</span><br /><br />As you may know, we've always included some blogs from news organizations in Google News. However, we've heard from some of our users that the way we displayed these blogs in Google News was not very clear. To address this, we're now visibly marking articles published on a news blog with a "(blog)" label attached to the publication's name. <br /><br />The same sources that were there before will still be available, and nothing will change in our rankings to impact where or how often they appear in Google News. We're making this change to ensure a high quality experience for our users and help them find these types of articles.<br /><br />Here's an example to illustrate our change: <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/improving-handwashing-among-doctors/">this article</a> from the blog section of the New York Times is now displayed under the name [<a href="http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22Improving+Hand+Hygiene+Among+Doctors%22">New York Times (blog)</a>].<br /><br />If we crawl a blog-formatted site, all of the blog's articles should be assigned the "(blog)" tag. If you notice sites that are labeled incorrectly, please <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/request.py?contact_type=report_an_issue">let us know</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Google News is fluent in Arabic!</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:29:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by William Kanaan, Middle East and North Africa Product Manager</span><br /><br />We're delighted to announce the launch of four new Arabic editions of Google News for <a href="http://news.google.com.eg/">Egypt</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com.lb/">Lebanon</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com.sa/">Saudi Arabia</a>, and the <a href="http://news.google.ae/">United Arab Emirates</a>. Users in these countries can now access their country-specific news editions and get the latest headlines in topics such as Business, Sports, Entertainment and more.<br /><br />With more than 40 million Arabic-speaking internet users across multiple countries, we understand the need to provide our users with the most relevant news for their region. Like all Google News editions, our computer-generated Arabic editions aggregate headlines from thousands of news outlets around the world, group similar stories together and link directly to the original sources that publish these stories. This enables users to search for topics they're interested in, and read a wide variety of perspectives from different sources. It also enables publishers to expand their reach to a wider audience, thus increasing traffic to their site.<br /><br />If you'd like to see a site included in Google News, or would like to send feedback our way, please <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/static.py?page=contact_policy.cs">contact us</a>.<br /><br />We're very excited to offer this service to our Arabic users in Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, and we look forward to covering the rest of the Arab countries in the near future!<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Google News Tips for Publishers</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:27:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by</span><span class="byline-author"> Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">[cross-posted from the <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/tips-for-news-search.html">Google Webmaster Central Blog</a>]</span><br /></span> <span class="post-author"> </span> <span class="byline-author"></span><br />During my stint on the "<a href="http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Official-Google-Meetup/calendar/10823289/">How Google Works Tour: Seattle</a>", I heard plenty of questions regarding News Search from esteemed members of the press, such as <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home">The Stranger</a>, <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/index.html">The Seattle Times</a> and <a href="http://www.seattleweekly.com/">Seattle Weekly</a>. After careful note-taking throughout our conversations, the News team and I compiled this presentation to provide background and FAQs for all publishers interested in Google News:<br /><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hg8xgoULIIE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></object><br /><br />Along with the FAQs about News Sitemaps and PageRank in the video above, here's additional Q&A to get you started:<br /><br /><i>Would adding a city name to my paper—for example, changing our name from "The Times" to "The San Francisco Bay Area Times"—help me target my local audience in News Search?</i><blockquote>No, this won't help News rankings. We extract geography and location information from the article itself (see video). Changing your name to include relevant keywords or adding a local address in your footer won't help you target a specific audience in our News rankings.</blockquote><i>What happens if I accidentally include URLs in my News Sitemap that are <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=74288&topic=11666">older than 72 hours</a>?</i><blockquote>We want only the most recently added URLs in your News Sitemap, as it directs Googlebot to your breaking information. If you include older URLs, no worries (there's no penalty unless you're perceived as maliciously spamming -- this case would be rare, so again, no worries); we just won't include those URLs in our next News crawl. </blockquote>To get the full scoop, check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg8xgoULIIE">the video</a> (filmed by Michael Wyszomierski of our Search Quality Team) or the Google News <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=151309">Forum Publisher FAQ</a>!<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Suggest on Google News</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:24:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by</span> Corrie Scalisi and Ari Shotland, Software Engineers<br /><br />Like many of our users, we were very excited when Google Suggest was incorporated into Google.com almost a year ago. The feature provides real-time suggestions while you search.<br /><br />Today, we're happy to announce that we've enabled Suggest in all of our Google News editions in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. The feature can make your experience searching Google News better by helping you formulate queries, saving you keystrokes, correcting spelling mistakes and exposing you to queries you might not have thought of. The goal of all that? To get you to the articles you're looking for as quickly as possible.<br /><br />As you can see, we've tuned our algorithm so that it presents suggestions that are particularly relevant for news-related queries:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Spg4SfT_oCI/AAAAAAAAAJw/Bx5709XkIeg/s1600-h/Picture+1.png"></a><br /><br />We are working on enabling Suggest in other editions of Google News, so stay tuned!<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Looking Backward: Nominating a new Justice</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:15:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Ryan Sands, Google News Online Team</span><br /><br />A few minutes ago, the United States Senate voted 68-31 in favor of confirming Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the newest addition to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor's confirmation followed three days of debate on the Senate floor, and was preceded by a series of lengthy and widely-reported confirmation hearings in July. A simple search for [<a href="http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=sotomayor">Sotomayor</a>] on Google News yields articles from thousands of sources covering this developing story.<br /><br />Judge Sotomayor will soon become part of an elite group of Americans, as the 111th Justice to serve on the Court. The process by which new Justices are vetted and confirmed for this powerful body has long been a subject of intense media interest. As history was being made this week, I took a look back using News Archive Search's Timeline view for the term [<a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=supreme+court+confirmation&btnG=Search+Archives&num=10&hl=en&scoring=a">supreme court confirmation</a>]. While browsing the archives, common threads in media coverage of Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings jumped out at me. I've included some articles below from the last 75 years of Supreme Court History.<br /><br />These materials were made browsable via our <a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch/partner.html">News Archive Partner Program</a>. You can easily click the navigation toolbar to zoom in and out on an article, or fit the entire newspaper page in your browsing window.<br /><br />Click on each image or link to view an article in its original context:<br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QRAWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AhUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6580,2961792"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QRAWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AhUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6580,2961792">Morning Star - Jul 23, 1993</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=L7EKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Qk0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5953%2C4656617"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=L7EKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Qk0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5953%2C4656617">St. Petersburg Times - Aug 13, 1937</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TgsPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CoQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5556%2C1328073"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TgsPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CoQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5556%2C1328073">The Deseret News. - Jul 5, 1987</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3pURAAAAIBAJ&sjid=T-gDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1727,4834948"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3pURAAAAIBAJ&sjid=T-gDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1727,4834948">Eugene Register-Guard - Mar 21, 1939</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Pardon Our Dust: Temporary Issues with Webmaster Tools</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:06:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Abe Epton, Publisher Support Team</span><br /><br />Google News publishers have long made use of <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/">Webmaster Tools</a> to submit and update their News sitemaps, as well as learn more about how Google is crawling their site. Recently, the Webmaster Tools site underwent a <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/06/out-with-old-in-with-new.html">major makeover</a> designed to make it easier for publishers to use. As part of this process, Google News is working to improve our interaction with Webmaster Tools and help news publishers take advantage of some of WMT's helpful new features.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this also means that there are currently a few issues that publishers are seeing. We wanted to let you know what they were, and reassure you that we're working on them. While there may be some sawdust and loose nails lying around at the moment, it won't be long before a sturdy new edifice has been completed, and we think publishers will agree that the hard work will have been worth it. For the moment, however:<br /><ul><li>Webmaster Tools may report an incorrect "Last downloaded" date for News sitemaps, display a strange number of articles indexed, or display a News sitemap as "Pending" () even though Google News is already crawling the sitemap. The best way to determine if we're crawling a sitemap or not is to check your server logs for Googlebot.</li><li>From time to time, it may become necessary to resubmit your sitemap (for example, if the Type switches from News to Web). In order to do so, don't click the "Resubmit" button at the bottom of your sitemap list; instead, click the "Submit a Sitemap" link, select Google News from the Type dropdown box, and give us your sitemap's URL.</li></ul><div>We apologize for the inconvenience these issues may be causing you. We're working hard to improve the sitemap submission experience, and think you'll be pleased with the results.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Extra! Extra! Updates from our growing newspaper archives</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:20:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Ryan Sands, Google News Online Team</span><br /><br />Last September on this blog, <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/bringing-history-online-one-newspaper.html">we announced</a> a new initiative to digitize newspapers and make them accessible and searchable online.<br /><br />We've recently updated our index, quadrupling the number of articles included in News Archive Search. We now include articles from several new publications, including the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=-F4XAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OCIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4935,4998660&dq=">Halifax Gazette</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fwwRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ypMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6778%2C5018808">Sydney Morning Herald</a>, the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LMIVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KBEEAAAAIBAJ&dq=cuba&pg=5948%2C1689571">Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</a>, and the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mCEQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=M4wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3856,6030308&dq=david-bowie">Village Voice</a>. Working with our partners, we've also added new international publications such as the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=T48VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IgsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5896%2C308034">Manila Standard</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VwgFAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8DEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6071%2C1949496">The Nation</a> from Thailand, and many others.<br /><br />Looking for a place to start exploring this rich historical index? How about the complete <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=jl0XAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OCIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2422,359883&dq=">June 2, 1753 edition</a> of the Halifax Gazette, one of the oldest newspapers we've digitized to date.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SndVM6Jyj7I/AAAAAAAAAJI/a3DhiXKo_cc/s1600-h/halifax.jpg"></a><br /><br />News Archive Search is an ongoing effort, and we're continuing to work with publishers to add new materials. You can explore this historical treasure trove by searching on <a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch">News Archive Search</a> or by using the timeline feature after searching on <a href="http://news.google.com">Google News</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Working with News Publishers</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:46:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager</span><br /><br />We're constantly talking with web publishers, including those in the news industry, about how their content is indexed by search engines. Last week in Europe, a group of newspaper and magazine publishers signed a <a href="http://www.epceurope.org/presscentre/archive/International_publishers_demand_new_intellectual_property_rights.shtml">declaration</a> stating that "Universal access to websites does not necessarily mean access at no cost," and that they "no longer wish to be forced to give away property without having granted permission." We agree, and that's how things stand today.<br /><br />More than 25,000 news organizations across the globe choose to make their content available in Google News and other web search engines. They do so because they want their work to be found and read -- Google delivers more than a billion consumer visits to newspaper web sites each month. If at any point a web publisher feels as though we're not delivering value to them and wants us to stop indexing their content, they're able to do so quickly and effectively. To read more on this issue, see our post on the <a href="http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2009/07/working-with-news-publishers.html">European Public Policy blog</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Looking Backward: Happy anniversary, Walkman!</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:57:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Ryan Sands, Google News Online Team</span><br /><br />Thirty years ago this week, Sony introduced the first Walkman to consumers in Japan. Released on July 1, 1979, the model TPS-L2 was the first in a long history of portable stereo devices. The shape, size, and data format of portable music players continues to evolve, but for many people my age the <a href="http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=678d88a96c04b9e4">Sony Walkman</a> was their first music device.<br /><br />As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, my Sony Walkman cassette player was my most prized possession, and an important part of my identity. My first tapes were Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream and MC Hammer's Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. While my little iPod shuffle can easily hold dozens of cassettes' worth of songs, it's hard to imagine developing the same degree of affection that I held for my first Walkman.<br /><br />On this 30th anniversary of it's release, I took a look back using News archive search's Timeline view for the term [<a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch?as_q=walkman&num=10&hl=en&btnG=Search+Archives&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_user_ldate=&as_user_hdate=&lr=&as_src=&as_price=p0&as_scoring=a">walkman</a>], focusing on articles from the United States in the 1980s. These materials were made browsable via our <a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch/partner.html">News Archive Partner Program</a>. You can easily click the navigation toolbar to zoom in and out on an article, or fit the entire newspaper page in your browsing window.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SkzjwpefJNI/AAAAAAAAAJA/DLgUjIcDNAU/s1600-h/toolbar.jpg"></a><br /><br /><b>Click on each image or link to view an article in its original context:</b><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LCQWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KBIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5625,4754310"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LCQWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KBIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5625,4754310">The Milwaukee Sentinel - Jun 24, 1983</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ohQSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1e4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7234,6404949"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ohQSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1e4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7234,6404949">The Spokesman-Review - Aug 15, 1982</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w0ENAAAAIBAJ&sjid=n20DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2780,3452975"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w0ENAAAAIBAJ&sjid=n20DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2780,3452975">Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Jul 16, 1982</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HRoRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=aJQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4817,1548210"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HRoRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=aJQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4817,1548210">The Age - Dec 3, 1981</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CPANAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GHEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3543,258717"></a><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CPANAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GHEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3543,258717">Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Aug 1, 2004</a><br /><br />For folks looking for more information from the early days of the Walkman, I found some the following magazine articles in Google Books, including <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=nRN263ekdaIC&pg=PA58&dq=walkman&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=1977&as_maxm_is=1&as_maxy_is=1988&as_brr=0&as_pt=MAGAZINES&ei=uFlJSuKmDoOmkAS-wPH5Dg">a review</a> in the September 1981 issue of Popular Science and <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=nQAAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&dq=walkman&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=1977&as_maxm_is=1&as_maxy_is=1988&as_brr=0&as_pt=MAGAZINES&ei=uFlJSuKmDoOmkAS-wPH5Dg">this ad</a> in the February 1984 issue.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>A Call to News Publishers: How to Share Your Video</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager</span><br /><br />We're always looking for ways to enhance the way people consume the news, and we have some improvements planned over the next few months. To get things started, Google News and YouTube are teaming up to help news publishers build a bigger audience for their video content.<br /><br />Today we are inviting any professional news outlet that is already included as one of the 25,000+ sources in Google News to become an official partner on YouTube and more easily share your news videos on both YouTube and Google News. Not already included in Google News? Just <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/static.py?page=contact_policy.cs">submit your site</a> here for review.<br /><br />Here are some of the benefits for News publishers who join the YouTube Partner Program:<br /><ul><li>Featured Premium Placement. YouTube news partners receive featured placement on the <a href="http://youtube.com/news">YouTube news page</a>, youtube.com/news, where we feature news videos from partners related to the top news stories on Google News. In addition, if you allow your videos to be embedded, they'll be eligible to appear on Google News, which means additional exposure to all Google News users.</li></ul><ul><li>Cut Costs, Generate Revenue. YouTube offers free hosting for all of your video content and allows you to embed your videos anywhere on the web for free. And as an official YouTube partner, you're eligible to participate in an advertising revenue share program.</li></ul><ul><li>Viewership Analysis. Learn more about the people viewing and interacting with your videos. Use YouTube's Insight tool to easily discover troves of useful demographic information and understand what parts of your videos people liked or didn't like. Geographic information provided can help you focus your marketing efforts.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>Wider Audience. YouTube and Google News have millions of visitors every day searching for the latest news and information. Raise awareness around your brand and reach new audiences by making your video content available on YouTube and Google News. As a YouTube partner, you can maintain your brand's look-and-feel with your own customized YouTube channel, and you can also drive traffic back to your own website.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>Community. At its core, YouTube is a rich social environment that includes thousands of micro-communities. Build one around your content by encouraging people to interact through comments and video responses. Take advantage of YouTube as a social platform.</li></ul>To get started, apply to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/partners">YouTube Partner Program</a>. Don't forget to include the website of your news organization in the "Company Web Site" field on your application form -- this is critical to having your application approved. If you don't already have a YouTube account, make sure to use an email address with the same domain as your website (e.g. johndoe@newswebsite.com) when registering.<br /><br />Once your application has been reviewed, you will receive an email confirming whether you are included in the YouTube Partner Program. If you are included, you will have the option to participate in revenue sharing and customize your branded channel.<br /><br />The Google News team will do a separate review and follow-up about including your videos in Google News.<br /><br />For more details on becoming a YouTube partner, please visit our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/t/partnerships_benefits">Partner Benefits page</a>. For a more in-depth explanation of submitting your video content for inclusion on Google News, take a look at our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93985">Help Center article: Video and other multimedia content</a>. Please submit any questions through our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/static.py?page=contact_policy.cs">Help Center</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Search by Author on Google News</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:02:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Nemanja Petrovic, Research Engineer</span><br /><br />The Google News home page is a good place to go to find headlines from publications around the world. But what if you're interested in the work of a specific journalist in addition to perspectives from different publications? Last Thursday, we launched a feature that highlights the contributions of journalists everywhere by allowing you to find more articles by individual reporters. <br /><br />If you spot an article by a specific journalist, you can click their name to bring up other articles they've written:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Sj7olh8nQnI/AAAAAAAAAHg/XpRTY0PZ6pY/s1600-h/w_arrow.png"></a><br /><br />You can also search for articles by a specific journalist under <a title="Advanced Search" href="http://news.google.com/news/advanced_news_search?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en" id="rj9l">Advanced Search</a> or by searching their name after "author:" in the Google News search box. For example, this feature allows you to follow the most recent stories by your favorite columnists or local journalists. Here I searched for content by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Sj7p9aMQ2OI/AAAAAAAAAIA/cv2lnez9XVY/s1600-h/Picture+6.png"></a><br /><br />As with any search on Google News, you can sign up to get the latest results through an RSS feed or email alerts.<br /><br />We're constantly working to increase the ways in which you can interact with the news, and we hope you'll like the new ability to search by author. With over 25,000 news sources crawled on Google News, we value the diversity of perspectives on the news, but there's also something to be said for being able to find and follow the voices of the journalists you like best!<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Google News gets a makeover</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:43:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Frank Harris and Jason Morrow, User Experience Designers</span><br /><br />Last month marked the 7-year anniversary of Google News. We thought we'd celebrate this year by refreshing the look and feel of the site with a new design that we launched today.<br /><br />First of all, you'll probably notice that we've included new color frames around each section on the homepage. We've also added YouTube logos to our existing embedded <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/would-you-like-video-with-that.html">news videos</a>, helping you to identify and discover our partners' video content more easily:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SgyhEGtJhKI/AAAAAAAAAHA/L7JmeJdLNT8/s1600-h/Picture+12.png"></a><br /><br />We also updated our section pages, categories like "Top Stories," "World," and "Business," to add featured videos and photos from our partners. The new pages also contain sections for images and for popular stories on the right side of the screen, below the featured photos and videos. Just as with the <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-ways-to-see-story.html">new story landing page</a> we launched last Thursday, our goal is to highlight more sources and provide our users with more ways to experience the news.<br /><br />For example, take a look at the entertainment section below:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SgyhKT2zCSI/AAAAAAAAAHI/U4SF8hAjECc/s1600-h/new+section+page-1.jpg"></a><br /><br />As with all features we introduce to Google News, these changes are designed to provide a better news browsing experience and connect you to a wide variety of perspectives on current events.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>More ways to see the story</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:26:00 +0000</p> Posted by David Ganzhorn and Corrie Scalisi, Software Engineers<br /><br />Last Thursday we launched a new format for story pages on Google News. These are the pages you see when you click the "all [#] news articles" link of each cluster of articles which cover the same news event--or "story," as we say on the Google News team.<br /><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Sgh9sTuxteI/AAAAAAAAAGg/udDvJRVZfGk/s1600-h/All+news+articles+link.jpg"></a></p>The story page includes timely and relevant information from different sources indexed in Google News. Depending on the most recent coverage and materials available for a given story, the page features top articles, quotes from the people in the story, and posts from news blogs. You'll also find image thumbnails, videos, articles from sources based near the story, and a <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/story-as-it-unfolded.html">timeline</a> of articles to trace media coverage of the story.<br /><br />For instance, take a look at the LA Lakers' win over the Houston Rockets in the NBA Playoffs above. When you click through to the story page, you can see a quote by Lakers Point Guard Derek Fisher reflecting on the game, a set of images from the game, and reactions to the game on different news blogs. For those of you interested in the reaction on the ground, you'll also find local articles on the game written in Los Angeles and Houston:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Sgh9ydfP_LI/AAAAAAAAAGo/J5BczN0NOAQ/s1600-h/v1+screenshot+of+new+slp.jpg"></a><br /><br />As always, clicking on any article or image will take you right to the original source, while clicking on a partner video link opens up the video in a small window on the page.<br /><br />Google News has always sought to provide you with a wide variety of perspectives on current events. Our new story page enables us to highlight more sources and provide our users with more ways to experience the news. As always, we're working to improve our product, and we appreciate <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news?hl=en">your feedback</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Looking Backward: A historical perspective on influenza</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:37:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Ryan Sands, Google News Online Team</span><br /><br />In the past few weeks, media outlets have exploded with stories about the growing number of cases of influenza A(H1N1). Also known as Swine Flu, the illness is being watched closely by governments and people around the world. Looking back through the archives of Google News, parallels to the current media climate jump out immediately from previous worldwide influenza outbreaks, in 1957 and again in 1968.<br /><br />But the worst all influenza outbreak on record was the infamous global pandemic of 1918, which raged until 1920 and ended up claiming millions of lives around the world. I decided to take a long view on the cycle of illness and media coverage, using News archive search's Timeline view for the term <a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=influenza&scoring=t">influenza</a> to focus in on articles from the United States in 1918. These materials were made browsable via our <a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch/partner.html">News Archive Partner Program</a>.<br /><br />Click on each image or link to view an article in its original context:<br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=428JAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iEcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5316,2295326"></a><br />From the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=428JAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iEcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5316,2295326">November 28, 1918 edition of The Deseret News</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8YoKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5UwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3810,4068111"></a><br />From the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8YoKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5UwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3810,4068111">September 14, 1918 edition of The St. Petersburg Times</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=tWIJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lEcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3100,2379112"></a><br />From the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=tWIJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lEcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3100,2379112">March 23, 1920 edition of The Deseret News</a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8nYDAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tSkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5629,1966162"></a><br />From the <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8nYDAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tSkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5629,1966162">February 21, 1920 edition of The Toronto World</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>@googlenews on Twitter</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:39:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Jack Hebert, Software Engineer<br /><br /></span>Google News aggregates stories from over 25,000 news sources updated continuously. Starting today, we're offering users an additional channel to follow the news by posting links to top stories as they become available on the new <a title="googlenews" href="http://twitter.com/googlenews" id="c535">googlenews</a> Twitter account.<br /><br />As with the Google News homepage, click on any headline that interests you and you'll go directly to the site which published that story.<br /><br />Here are some of our first tweets:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SfYaAkDbndI/AAAAAAAAAFw/OT_R-J0iqfs/s1600-h/Picture+7.png"></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Introducing Google News Timeline</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:17:00 +0000</p> Posted by Andy Hertzfeld, Software Engineer<br /><br />At Google, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to organize information. Today, we're announcing <a href="http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/" id="xjz5" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139);" title="Google News Timeline">Google News Timeline</a>--a new feature on <a href="http://www.googlelabs.com/" id="wl_j" title="Google Labs">Google Labs</a> that organizes many different types of search results on a zoomable, graphical timeline.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SezMCUuH6fI/AAAAAAAAAFg/Af6KWIZ_SyM/s1600-h/Picture+1.png"></a><br /><br />Google News Timeline presents search results from a wide range of sources. You can search and browse results from Google News, including headlines, <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/say-what.html">quotes</a>, photos from our Hosted News partners, and YouTube partner videos. You can also search for thousands of <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/bringing-history-online-one-newspaper.html">archival newspapers</a> and <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/search-and-find-magazines-on-google.html">magazines</a> from Google News Archive Search and Google Book Search.<br /><br />You can also add Blog Search results and sports scores, as well as information about books, music, movies, tv shows, video games, and even artists, to see how they've appeared over time. Try out some of our favorite queries like [<a href="http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/?q=Jack+Nicholson&corpus=movie">jack nicholson movies</a>], [<a href="http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/?q=Barack+Obama&corpus=newsquote">barack obama quotes</a>], or [<a href="http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/?q=baseball&corpus=newsphoto">baseball news photos</a>].<br /><br />To browse through time, you can specify a date in your search, drag the timeline of results, or set the time scale to days, weeks, months, years, or even decades. In this example, I searched for arcade video games that came out in the 1990s:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SezMH9GTh_I/AAAAAAAAAFo/QAKYt_5D2wE/s1600-h/Picture+7.png"></a><br /><br />We hope you'll enjoy exploring the Google News Timeline, and stay posted for <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/hard-at-play-in-google-labs-with.html">more new features</a> on Google Labs.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>The story, as it unfolded</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:13:00 +0000</p> Posted by Nandini Seshadri, Software Engineer<br /><br />When you visit Google News, you see the day's top news stories organized by section. You can then click through to any number of sources to read the news from different perspectives. Yet by their succinct nature, individual articles can only give partial snapshots of news stories that often develop over time, whether it's a couple of hours, days, or even weeks.<br /><br />Last week, we introduced a new "Timeline of articles" feature that provides a chronological view of the chain of events that make up a story. To view the timeline for a story, click the "all news articles" link under any cluster of articles on Google News:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SeUZ6YZUAxI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/jQXjXgUNOvk/s1600-h/gnewshpclusterv2.jpg"></a><br /><br />This will take you to a story page with relevant articles as well as a timeline on the right of page:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/SeUaE2nQv5I/AAAAAAAAAFY/D7VFsptDwQY/s1600-h/testzoomin2.png"></a><br /><br /><div id="c_-7" style="text-align: left;"><div id="r3jl" style="text-align: left;">The story on the pirate attack of a U.S. ship in Somalia this week provides a good example of when the timeline can be helpful. The graph shows the evolution of the story from the pirate takeover of the ship on April 10th to the release of the ship's captain on the 12th. The timeline also shows the evolution of media attention and coverage of the story, with a peak of nearly 3000 indexed articles written when the standoff ended and the captain was freed.<br /></div></div><br />The timeline of articles is one of several features we're bringing to Google News in the coming months. Stay tuned for these updates as they come, and until then, see how actual news stories unfold using the timeline.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Local news in more places</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:24:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Hicham Alaoui, Associate Product Marketing Manager</span> <br /> <br /><span>Last year we <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-news-is-local.html">announced</a> the launch of local news in the U.S., and this week we launched this feature of Google News to users in the UK, India, and Canada. <br /> <br />Local news sections let you keep track of current events in your area. We analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located. The top stories for a given area will be at the top of your results, and our rankings also take into account a publication's location to promote local sources for each story. <br /> <br />To get started, look for the local section on your front page and enter your city, state, or postal code in the local search bar, shown here: <br /> <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Sc1Ss8gwxJI/AAAAAAAAAFA/4fQC4jitLrs/s1600-h/Local+News+Canada.jpg"></a> <br /> <br />If you don't see this section, you can also set up your local news by clicking "Personalize this page" on the top right of the page. On the menu that comes up, click "Add a local section": <br /> <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/Sc1S5uS4gMI/AAAAAAAAAFI/Wwr5MTDpsio/s1600-h/Personalize+this+page+Canada.jpg"></a> <br /> <br />Once you've clicked the link, you'll see a place to enter a postal code or city. Use the drop-down menu to choose the number of stories you'd like to see. To finish, click "Add Section" and you'll see this local section on your personalized Google News page. <br /> <br />As always, we're working to improve our product, and we appreciate <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news?hl=en">your feedback</a>.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>New Insights for your Search</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:42:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Hicham Alaoui, Associate Product Marketing Manager</span><br /><br />Some of you may already be familiar with <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#" id="bxoe" title="Google Insights for Search">Google Insights for Search,</a> which <a href="http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/08/announcing-google-insights-for-search.html" id="dgze" title="launched">launched</a> last August.<br /><br />Much like Google Trends, you can use Insights for Search to analyze search volume patterns over time, as well as related queries and rising searches. You can also compare search trends across multiple search terms, categories, geographic regions, or specific time ranges. Insights for Search can help you can analyze everything from interest levels in <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22fc%20barcelona%22%2C%22real%20madrid%22&cmpt=q" id="ywra" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" title="relative popularity of soccer rivals">rival soccer teams</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> to the </span><a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Barack%20Obama%2CJohn%20McCain&date=1%2F2008%2012m&cmpt=q" id="z_8:" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" title="elative popularity of politicians in their respective cities or countries">relative popularity of politicians</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.<br /><br /></span>Today the Insights for Search team launched additional features that allow you to see what the world is searching for beyond Google Web Search, by adding new data sources including Google News, Image Search, and Product Search. The new Insights for Search lets you break down search data in several ways. For starters, you can take a look at the rising News searches over the past <a id="fp.m" href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=US&date=today%207-d&gprop=news&cmpt=q" title="7">7</a>, <a id="kwhs" href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=US&date=today%201-m&gprop=news&cmpt=q" title="30">30</a>, or <a id="y4ms" href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=US&date=today%203-m&gprop=news&cmpt=q" title="90">90</a> days. <div><br /></div>You can also view the popularity of a given query across different geographies, from country-level down to individual metropolitan areas. For journalists and newspapers, this feature could be a useful tool to gauge interest levels in different subjects among a reader base.<br /><br />For instance, with March Madness in full swing, I was curious to see if interest in basketball runs equally high throughout the U.S. I tried a search for "NCAA" queries on Google News over the past 7 days, and found that interest was predictably high across much of the U.S. yet markedly higher in Kentucky, Iowa, and Kansas, as you can see on the map below:<br /><br /><div id="p930" style="text-align: left;"> <div id="x46l" style="text-align: left;"> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gLGYheTX5nY/ScgzhZsSaGI/AAAAAAAAAE4/-u3CptW0w1s/s1600-h/Picture+9.png"></a> </div> </div>Of course, Insights for Search can't quite explain these search asymmetries, but they're interesting to note nonetheless!<br /><br />To learn more about this new release of Insights for Search, head over to the <a href="http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-insights-for-search-features.html" id="eo1v" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" title="Inside Adwords blog">Inside Adwords blog</a>, or start exploring right away on the <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search">Google Insights for Search homepage</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>More Hosted News partners in Europe!</h1> <p>Google News Blog — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Josh Cohen, Business Product Manager</span><br /><br />We're excited to announce today that 8 news agencies, which are members of the <a href="http://www.epa.eu/">European Pressphoto Agency</a>, will be joining our existing Hosted News partners. As with our existing agreements, these new partnerships will enable us to host and distribute EPA's original newswire content on Google News, highlighting the original contributions of even more newswire journalists providing you with access to stories right from the source. We hope to make EPA's content (which will also include ads) available in the coming months.<br /><br />We look forward to continuing to work with all of our partners as well as new ones to come, to help them distribute, promote, and earn revenue from their content.<br /><br />For more information on Google News, visit: <a href="http://news.google.com/">news.google.com</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> </main></body></html>