News Badges
The U.S. Edition of Google News now lets you collect private, sharable badges for your favorite topics. The more articles you read on Google News, the more your badges level up: you can reach Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and finally Ultimate. Keep your badges to yourself, or show them off to your friends.
Earning Badges
If you’re signed-in to a Google account and have web history enabled, you will earn badges as you click on articles in Google News. Both desktop and mobile clicks earn you badges. Tips:
- Badges will level up faster if you read a few relevant articles every day, rather than trying to read everything at once.
- You can click on a badge to see articles that will help the badge reach its next level.
- If you read a few articles a day about your favorite topics, you should earn your first badge in about a week.
- At the moment, clicks only count toward News Badges if you have selected "One Column" mode. You can choose this format via the News Settings page, which you can access via the gear icon at the top right of the page.
Sharing Badges
By default, only you can see your badges. You can choose to share a specific badge in your badge collection by mousing over the badge and clicking one of the sharing icons. When you share a badge, it reveals your badge’s name and level, as well as the rough number of articles that you have read about the badge’s topic. Your friends will not see the specific articles that you have read.
Hiding Badges
To hide a specific badge from your collection, hover over the badge and click the trash can. Individual hidden badges cannot be restored, so be careful!
To hide all Google News badges, click the “X” in the top right of “Google News Badges” in the side column, or click “Turn off all news badges” when you’re notified about badges.
To restore Google News Badges, go to your News Settings page (accessible by clicking on the gear icon at the top-right of your screen) and click the checkbox, "Show Google News Badges."
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