Following the polls on Super Tuesday

Tuesday, February 5, 2008 11:21 AM

Posted by Josh Cohen, Business Product Manager

If you somehow escaped US electioneering up to this point, you probably won't today, Super Tuesday, when 24 states choose their candidates for the fall election. This will be the largest number of primaries going on at one time in the history of the U.S. electoral system.

Over the last few weeks and months, there has been a massive volume of news coverage, statistics and polls -- and there will be even more today. Our mission is to help organize all of it for you, so you can find what you're looking for. There are a number of ways Google can help you keep track of all the candidates and issues -- from Maps with the latest results, to YouTube videos from voters across the country. You can read all about these initiatives on the Google Blog.

Of course, we want to do our part as well. In addition to all the latest stories from thousands of sources in our new Elections section, we've also put together a gadget that tracks the progress of the candidates in each of the 24 states. Here's an example of how it might look; please note these are not actual results!


In addition to providing up to date information about the results on all the candidates as the polls close, you'll also be able to view this information on Google Maps. You can see the results across the United States, within a particular region, and even as specific as a particular county.

So check it out and let us know what you think.

We want to hear from you!

Tuesday, January 29, 2008 1:18 PM

Posted by Greta Ghizzo Van Everen, News Support Team

If you're looking for an easy way to let us know what new features you'd like in Google News, look no further. Today, we're launching a new feature request form that will make this process a lot easier. We tried to include many of the most popular and interesting features that people have suggested. Whether it's a new standard section or new search functionalities, we want to know what's important to you when you're using Google News. You can select up to 5 choices from this form and if the feature you want is not listed, suggest it with the "I have another idea" box at the bottom of the page. We'll use your ideas to help inform us about what changes to make to News in the coming months.

And for the entire News team, I'd like to thank you for all the feedback you've given us over the years. We hope the form will make this process easier for you to send in your suggestions. Stay tuned to find out which new features are coming soon.

Tracking election coverage

Friday, December 21, 2007 5:07 PM

Posted by David Garnick, News Engineering Team

I'm a bit of a junkie for political news, and of course I follow elections. The U.S. section of Google News covers a broad range of topics that are of interest to a national audience; thus, typically, few stories pertain to elections. There is no simple query that I can use in the News search box that will give me a broad and current selection of stories related to the elections. To provide direct access to extensive coverage of the candidates, the campaigns, and the issues, Google News has launched a new Elections section on our front page. This brings you the top stories on national, state, and local elections throughout the United States.

The Elections section appears on the front page along with all of the previously supported sections. If you've personalized your front page, you can add this new section with a single click of the button following the announcement at the top of the front page. If you navigate to the full Elections section, there is a gadget you can use to "Follow the Candidates." The candidates tab allows you to select the candidates you wish to track. The video, news, and blogs tabs allow you to find content specific to those candidates. The maps tab allows you to follow those candidates on the campaign trail. You can use the button below the gadget to add the gadget to your iGoogle page.

Now I can easily satisfy my appetite for election news, and as a big election season gets underway, I'm excited and proud to be working on the Google News Team to help keep others informed too.

Cricket Scores in Google News

Thursday, December 20, 2007 2:11 PM

Posted by Sadeesh Duraisamy & Prasanna Meda, Software Engineers

We're excited to share a new feature for Google News India: you can now get the latest cricket scores right on the front page! If there's a cricket match going on somewhere in the world (and there always is) you will have the latest information available. And if you want all the cricket news in addition to the latest scores while you're on the Google News front page, you can personalize Google News by creating a custom section. In fact, even if you don't read Google News India, but still want to get the latest cricket scores, simply add a custom section from the India edition to your edition, and you'll be able to see the latest cricket scores on your Google News front page wherever you live. Be sure to check out our Hindi News edition as well.

We hope this gives you your fill of cricket scores and more, so let us know what you think.

New Advanced News search

Monday, December 17, 2007 4:22 PM

Posted by Sheng Yu and Sean Wan, Software Engineers

Want to find articles from a specific news source? You may not know of some tricks to make Google News do the work for you. Try using our site operator along with a keyword, like this: [site:iht.com Paris]. Or you can also use our advanced news search page. Just type the source name into the news source box and click the search button, and you'll get stories from the source you want.

And if you've ever forgotten some or all of the name of a news source, in the past, you'd have to rack your brain to figure out the complete name first. We kept this in mind when we improved our advanced search. You don't need to spend time trying to remember the complete name of a news source any more. Just tell us the words you know: [source:"new york"]. Then we will return articles from those sources whose name contains these specific words.



You can also use the new, smarter advanced news search page. When you are typing the source name into the source box, suggestions will be shown in a drop-down list. If you select one of the suggested sources, your search results will include only articles from the source. If you just type in some keywords, articles from those sources containing the specific words will be returned.

One more thing: you can also do operator searches and use the advanced search page in all editions now. We hope you enjoy these new features, and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Quantity and quality

Friday, December 7, 2007 11:15 AM

Posted by Sharad Jain, Software Engineer

The goal of Google News has always been to offer as many perspectives on a story as possible to help you better understand current events. That's why we crawl thousands of sources from around the world. We try to help you find stories in every language, in every country, from every newspaper and for every story. But Google News isn't just about including every story; it's about helping you find the stories that matter most to you. The way we do this is with our news ranking algorithms, which are designed to enable you to make sense of all this information by showing you the most relevant news first.

We are constantly improving our algorithms to bring you a better organized, more relevant selection of the day's news. This is an ongoing process, but in the past few months we have been working on a number of improvements that we hope bring us closer to this goal. While many of these aren't new features that you might notice right away, we hope they'll provide a better experience.

One example we recently released is a new algorithm to help determine the most recent update to a story. In other words, it lets us find something new that's been added to a breaking story. So instead of just seeing the most recent publishing activity for a breaking story, we highlight the sources which brought you the information in the first place. Once there's new information from another source, we update our results so you get any new developments to the story.

Another signal we've added helps us recognize the importance of local context in a story. In order to provide a local angle to global events, we have started actively promoting high quality local reporting in addition to coverage from foreign sources. This means we try to find sources at the scene of a story who are doing original reporting. It may be a national or international story with many sources from around the world reporting on it, but often times one of the best sources of information on a story are those closest to it.

There are quite a few other exciting quality initiatives we are working on, but we don't want to take away all the suspense! So keep reading Google News and sending us your ever-helpful feedback on these changes. Namaste!

Easier-to-use news sitemaps

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 3:47 PM

Posted by Andy Golding, News Engineering Team

Hey news publishers, have you checked out Google's Webmaster Tools lately? Did you know that you can submit a sitemap listing specific articles you would like us to include in Google News? Recently, we announced that this capability is available to all publishers in all Google News editions.

Today, we're excited to tell you about a change that makes it easier for publishers to create sitemaps: you can now include articles from multiple hosts in the same sitemap. For example, if you own world.mynews.com, business.mynews.com, and sports.mynews.com, you can submit a single sitemap containing articles from all three hosts; it is no longer necessary to maintain a separate sitemap for each. The sitemap itself can reside on any of the hosts. The only requirement is that all articles in the sitemap be for the same news publication. This was announced on the Webmaster Central blog last month, and we're excited to make it possible for news publishers. This should simplify the process of sitemap submission for many of you.

Going forward, stay tuned for innovations both small and large to help make it easier for you to include your content in Google News. If you have feedback or suggestions for us, please visit our News Help group.

Now in the Czech Republic

Thursday, November 22, 2007 12:15 PM

Posted by Marián Dvorský, Software Engineer

The Czech edition of News was my first 20% project here at Google. Therefore I'm very excited to see it now live at news.google.cz.

Zprávy Google (as Google News is called in Czech) aggregates stories from hundreds of news sources in the Czech language. Stories are presented in sections similar to those in other editions. We have modified the Health section that is common to other editions to include travel and lifestyle articles as well.

I hope our Czech users will find the edition useful. For me it is now time to move on to an another exciting 20% project.

To sign in, or not to sign in: that is the question

Thursday, November 15, 2007 3:27 PM

Posted by Greta Ghizzo Van Everen, News Support Team

If you rely on getting your daily dose of news from your personalized Google News homepage, here are a couple of things you can do to access it from anywhere in the world. In case you're not familiar, personalizing your Google News homepage allows you to create custom sections that contain stories on a specific topic. You can also add standard sections (such as Business or World) from other regional and language editions. It's a great way to get all of the news you want in one place!

The easiest way to manage your personalized News page is by signing in to your Google Account. This will allow you to access your news page from any computer in the same way you would log in to your Gmail account. Signing in also lets you switch across to our other services quickly and easily. For instance, if you’ve just finished checking your messages on Gmail and want to switch to reading the latest news, all you need to do is click on the News tab that is displayed at the top of the page and you’ll be redirected to your personalized Google News page.

The neat thing about Google News is that it lets you personalize your News page even if you decide not to sign in to your Google Account. However, keep in mind that by choosing this option, you’ll only be able to save and view your personalized News page only from the computer you’re using. Therefore, if you’ve personalized your News page on your work computer, you won’t be able to view it using your home computer.

Another limitation of not signing in to your Google Account is that you’ll lose all the settings and changes made to your news page any time you clear your cookies. To prevent this from happening, after you’re done customizing your news page, you can click on the link at the bottom of the homepage that says "Share your personalized News with a friend" and send it to yourself. By saving the URL of this version of Google News in your Inbox, you can access your personalized Google News page from other computers by simply retrieving the email that was sent to you. Just remember to resend this link to yourself anytime you make changes to your news page so that you’ll always have the most up-to-date URL of your personalized Google News homepage.

If you feel this is too much of a hassle, then I recommend you sign in to your Google Account to create your personalized News page. It’s easier, faster and only one click away from Gmail and all other Google products.

Add Google News to Your Site

Monday, November 5, 2007 2:58 PM

Posted by Mark Lucovsky, Software Engineer

If you are a web site owner, a blogger, or a professional site designer, take a look at the latest creation from the AJAX Search API team. With just a few clicks, anyone can configure and add a sleek looking Google NewsBar to their site.



The NewsBar is designed with your needs in mind. It can be configured in a horizontal mode where it delivers a continuous stream of news headlines to your site. The vertical mode delivers both news headlines and snippets. The NewsBar is perfect for your topical sites or blogs. For instance, if you are following the Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton race, try this NewsBar.

If you are a professional developer and want to use some of the more advanced features of the NewsBar, there is a complete developer guide that will walk you through all of the options. If you run a blog on Blogger, the NewsBar is already built in. To add it to your blog, just edit your blog's layout, and add the "Newsreel" page element.

A few controls that might complement your use of the NewsBar are, The YouTube VideoBar, The LocalSearch Control for Google Maps, the Slideshow Control, and the Dynamic Feed Control.