News Blog
The official blog from the team at Google News
Putting a Spotlight on Local News Sources
Monday, May 9, 2016
Posted by James Morehead, Product Manager, Google News
TL;DR Google News has launched a “Local Source” Tag to surface local coverage of major stories.
Local news publishers play a critical role in covering the stories that impact us every day in our cities, schools and neighborhoods. Local reporters are often members of the communities they serve, bringing additional context and perspective to a story. Local news is also important to our users: according to the March 2015 Pew Research study
Local News in a Digital Age
, which looked at three metro areas across the U.S., “nearly nine-in-ten residents follow local news closely—and about half do so very closely”.
With more than 75,000 news sources, many of the publishers in Google News specialize on specific topics and locales. The local section in Google News surfaces content from regional papers to hyper-local blogs that otherwise wouldn’t appear in national news.
But not all local stories stay local. When a local story is picked up by national publishers, it can be difficult for local sources to be heard even after they’ve done the legwork and research to break a story. Consistent with our goal to surface diverse perspectives, we’re excited to share that a new "Local Source" tag is now live across all Google News editions. This new feature brings greater exposure for local news outlets reporting on stories that have gone national. "Local Source" articles are identified automatically by looking at where a publisher has written about in the past and comparing that to the story location. You’ll see the tagged articles in the
expanded story box
on
news.google.com
and in the Google News & Weather
iOS
and
Android
apps.
A great example of hyperlocal news is 9-year-old reporter Hilde Lysiak. Hilde made headlines when she reported on the story of a murder in her hometown which she published on her own local news site --
Orange Street News
(
AMP-enabled
to load really fast on mobile). Her reporting attracted the attention of major newspapers and morning shows like
Good Morning America
after she was criticised for being too young to cover hard news. It was one reason we invited Hilde to visit the Googleplex on
World Press Freedom Day 2016
. And just like Hilde, at Google News we are committed to connecting people to the news that matters most to them -- be that local, national or international.
9-year-old Hilde Lysiak visited Google on World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2016.
AMPlifying the News
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Posted by Maricia Scott, Engineering Director, Google News
At its heart, Google News is about keeping people up-to-date with what is going on in the world and providing news from diverse perspectives. But this goal is meaningless unless we get the reading experience right. For too many people, reading the news on their mobile devices can be slow and clunky, forcing them to abandon a site. That’s why we joined others across the industry on the
Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
(AMP for short) - an open source initiative to make the mobile web as fast as possible.
In the few months since AMP launched, thousands of publishers have embraced this new format and are regularly publishing AMP-versions of their content. In February Google started making it easy to find those AMP webpages in relevant
mobile search results
, giving you a lightning-fast reading experience. Today we will be doing the same thing in Google News on all our mobile platforms -- Web, Android and iOS.
So - what’s new? At the top of the page, there is a new AMP carousel filled with important headlines and stories of the day. Users can browse up to 14 headlines there quickly, and click any article to jump into the viewer, which is optimized for fast-loading AMP articles. In the viewer, people can also swipe to continue reading other stories from the carousel. Within the regular News stream, AMPlified articles are labelled with the AMP lightning bolt icon. That way, users can know these will be fast even before they click.
Our tests have shown that AMP documents load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than the equivalent non-amp’ed result. In many cases these stories will load instantly. That adds up to a win for publishers and users. While we can’t expand the amount of time in the day, with AMP we can help users consume more content in the time they do have. It is also great for publishers because people will read more and click on more stories when they know they will load fast, driving more traffic to a publisher’s site.
We’re starting AMPlification with our English US Edition - more languages and editions will be rolling out soon.
Spreading the News in New Languages
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Posted by Brian Kemler, Product Manager
The next billion internet users are from all countries and corners of the globe. We want Google News to be there to greet them in their own languages to help satisfy their thirst for news.
Google News already supports 28 languages spanning 45 countries. Over the next few days we will add seven new language editions. Romanian is the first followed by Bahasa Indonesia, Bengali, Bulgarian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Thai. This effort will connect a potential new audience of over 260 million people to reporting that matters to them, delivered in their mother tongue on the web or our native
Android
or
iOS
mobile apps.
Whatever country people come from or language they speak, Google News is one place they turn to to discover facts, views and perspectives on the stories they care about. With these new editions, we hope we can help bring the news closer to more of our users. Look out for other language editions in the next few months.
Update, December 10th, 2015; Google News added 2 more languages, Slovak and Slovenian, bringing the total number of supported languages to 37.
Google News & Weather now on the Play store with a new look
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Product Manager, News & Social Team
UPDATE
: The News & Weather App is now available on iOS
here
.
News happens 24/7. To keep up with a fast-paced news cycle, you need a fast-paced app. That was our objective in updating Google News and Weather. It makes the news easier to browse, simpler to digest, and more easily tailored to the news you care about.
Upgrade to the latest version of the app or download it from Google Play
here
-- including a new tablet version -- for
the best of Google News:
Swipe through categories like Business, Technology and Sports or add your own sections for specific topics or places
Tap into any story for a variety of viewpoints, including in-depth articles, op-eds, and local perspectives
Get comprehensive coverage from over 65,000 publications worldwide, and a choice of more than 60 country-specific editions
Sign in with your Google account to take all your customizations with you when you access Google News from any device—phone, tablet, or desktop
We’re rolling out the app to all compatible Android devices and locations globally over the next few days, so stay tuned. We want as many users as possible to get a high quality Google News experience and look forward to launching on other platforms soon.
Introducing the Google News Publisher Center
Monday, August 4, 2014
Posted by Eric Weigle, Software Engineer
UPDATE:
And even more good news as the Publisher Center is now up and running in all countries where Google News has an edition. (Dec 16 2014)
UPDATE:
The Publisher Center is now available for publishers in France, Italy, Germany and Spain as well as in all 21 countries where a Google News edition is available in English. (October 27 2014)
If you are a news publisher, your website has probably evolved and changed over time. Until now, when you made changes to the structure of your site, we might not have discovered them unless you told us. And that meant they might not have shown up in Google News, which in turn could have resulted in readers not seeing your great content. To prevent this from happening, we are letting you make changes to our record of your news site using the just-launched
Google News Publisher Center.
With the Publisher Center, you can benefit from better discovery and classification of your content and you can directly make the following changes:
Update your news site details
, including changing your site name and labeling your publication with any relevant source labels (e.g., “Blog”, “Satire” or “Opinion”)
Update your section URLs
when you change your site structure (e.g., when you add a new section such as http://example.com/2014commonwealthgames or http://example.com/elections2014)
Label your sections
with a specific topic (e.g., “Technology” or “Politics”)
Try it out
, or learn more about
how to get started.
At the moment the tool is only available to publishers in the U.S. but we plan to introduce it in other countries soon and add more features. In the meantime, we’d love to
hear from you
about what works well and what doesn’t. Ultimately, our goal is to make this a platform where news publishers and Google News can work together to provide readers with the best, most diverse news on the web.
Helping Local News Thrive
Monday, February 24, 2014
Posted by Richard Gingras
Senior Director, News & Social Products
In the digital era it’s easy to read stories from around the globe connecting us to a million different views and opinions. But what does that mean for local news? Where does the so called “Daily Bugle” fit into our regular diet of news consumption?
Well, despite the plethora of media outlets, most people cite the local paper as one of their top news sources. This is underlined by a National Newspaper Association
survey
that came out this month showing that two-thirds of residents in small towns across America depend on their local paper for news and information.
In order to ensure that community newspapers can endure, Google has developed a landmark deal with the
Local Media Consortium
. The partnership means this industry body - made up of more than 800 daily newspapers and 200 local broadcast stations - can tap into the power of Google’s ads technology to help fund and support the local journalism that so many people cherish and rely on.
For me that local touchstone is the
Los Altos Town Crier
and the
Mountain View Voice
, which help keep me up-to-date on the latest shenanigans over a new building development, news about the
local high school sports teams
, and the ever-fascinating
police log
.
To find out more details on this partnership, visit our
DoubleClick Publisher blog
.
Designing News for you on the go
Friday, December 6, 2013
Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Product Manager, Google News and Social
Increasingly people are reading News “on the go” and using their smartphones to keep abreast of the latest happenings around the globe. Over the next few days Google News readers on Android and iOS devices will start to see a beautiful new version of the mobile web app that will provide an improved overall experience resulting in a kind of real time news desk for you on your phone.
Here are just some of the highlights:
Improved overall look-and-feel making it easier to read and track separate stories.
Ability to customize the webapp to suit your taste by changing the theme from light to dark, the font size and opting for a larger “story card” with more information per story at your fingertips (from the Settings menu, at top right).
Simplified navigation to any section within News; just click on the Google News icon (top left) to see a list of available sections (including any custom sections you created).
Easier integration with Google Feedback located in the menu at the top right.
Additionally we have ensured that some favorite desktop features have been included such as:
A weather gadget in the Local section.
The popular “Editors Picks” option.
Social posts from Google + related to the story are included in the article cluster.
We’re launching in the US first and plan to bring the same experience to all our international editions soon.
All this goodness is packaged in a browser so give it a try by just visiting
news.google.com
from the Chrome/Safari browser on either Android or iOS phones.
More News at Your Fingertips
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Anand Paka, Google News Product Manager
Did my favorite team win or lose? Should I carry sunscreen or rain gear when I go hiking this weekend? And what did I miss in the world of technology and business? These quintessential questions of the day are all ones that Google News can provide quick answers to with some nifty new features. The aim is all about making news more relevant and useful to you by surfacing content that you might need in a hurry.
1. For avid sports fans, a newly introduced “Sports Scores” section on the News homepage and the Sports page will give a snapshot of live, recently concluded and imminent sporting activity. From this summary, it’s easy to dive in further and do things like click on a score for details of the match or on a specific team to get recent news about it. The section is customizable; for example, if you prefer not to see hockey scores, you can turn hockey ‘off’ while keeping the other sports ‘on’. You can also remove the entire section if you prefer. At the outset, we’re launching in the US, with the big four sporting organizations covering basketball, football, baseball and hockey. Over time, this section will expand to other countries and sports. Stay tuned.
2. Our homepage also has a new Weather section on the right-hand column. With a quick glance, this section lets you see the 4-day weather forecast starting from today. The weather section is ‘smart’ - it defaults to show the weather for your current location. (As with local news, you can
set this location manually
.) We think this is a neat feature as you can track local weather conditions right next to the top stories without having to jump elsewhere to get this information.
3.The Editors’ Picks section has been a great channel for publishers and readers alike. It offers publishers a unique way to showcase their best work and build their brand, while enabling readers to discover great content that they might otherwise miss. Today we have extended Editors’ Picks from our homepage to our section pages so that you can now enjoy these hand picked articles for the particular section that you are reading at any given time. Editors’ Picks are now being introduced into the Technology and Business sections with plans to add more over time.
Look for these features the next time you visit Google News.
A reminder about promotional and commerce journalism
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Posted by
Richard Gingras,
Sr. Director, News & Social Products
Credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values, and ones which we all regard as crucial attributes of a great news site. It’s difficult to be trusted when one is being paid by the subject of an article, or selling or monetizing links within an article. Google News is not a marketing service, and we consider articles that employ these types of promotional tactics to be in violation of our
quality guidelines
.
Please remember that
like Google search
, Google News takes action against sites that violate our quality guidelines. Engagement in deceptive or promotional tactics such as those described above may result in the removal of articles, or even the entire publication, from Google News.
If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you
separate non-news content
on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only.
Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.
A better Google News experience on tablets
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Product Manager, Google News
[Edited 02/13/2013]
Update
: The new Google News experience for tablets is now available in most English editions worldwide. Hope you enjoy it!
There’s something special about reading news on your tablet. Indeed, swiping through Google News on your tablet is a comfortable and effective way to find more articles from great publications that satisfy your needs and tickle your serendipitous interests. Starting today, Google News feels even more natural and fluid on tablet devices. For example:
You can find new articles, news sources, and even topics of interest with intuitive gestures. Swipe horizontally between sections – from Business to Entertainment, for example – or tap “Explore in depth” to see multiple articles and other info related to a particular story.
We’ve also added more breathing room between articles, making it easier to spot the stories you really care about.
We think these improvements will help Google News send even more visits to news sites (six billion per month and counting).
To give it a try, just visit
news.google.com
with your Nexus 7, Nexus 10, or iPad.
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