Google Expands News Service

Though the banner graphic indicates that it's still in beta, Google News has done some real expanding. You can see the new version at http://news.google.com

The front page looks a lot different now. Stories are the front pages are grouped into several different categories, including Top Stories, World, Sci/Tech, and Sports. A list of categories on the left side of the page lets you view a page full of that category's stories.

The really big change is the number of sources. The front page of the news site now claims over 4,000 sources, way up from the hundred or so that were available when the site first launched. When I first covered Google News in March of this year, I noted that the news search contained seven days' worth of material. This new incarnation seems to have expanded in that regard too; I found material from August 29, so it looks like Google News is indexing at least three weeks' worth of material.

A functionality tip for those of you who have bookmarked Google News searches: run a Google News search and sort it by date (you'll see the sort by date option on the upper right part of the page after you run a search.) You'll lose the relevance grouping but you'll now have the newest additions at the top. See how you only have 10 results per page? Add &num=100 to the end of the result URL. Voila, you'll have 100 results or the number of results from the search, whichever comes first.

If you didn't try Google News before because of the anemic results, try again. It's filled out considerably.

Posted to Search Engines-Google