When searching Google for [news], the first page shows 9 results and 4 of them send users to Google News. The news site owned by Google is the top search result, but there are also 3 duplicate results that have some additional parameters:

https://news.google.com/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferdb898&utm_medium=twitter

https://news.google.com/?utm_content=buffer73b38&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

https://news.google.com/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer67782&utm_medium=twitter


This is obviously a bug and it's strange to see that Google didn't ignore Google Analytics parameters.

Here's a quick way to find the latest news stories when using a mobile device. Just search Google for [news] and you'll get a card that shows the top stories. Tap the arrow icons or swipe left/right to switch to other Google News sections like world news, business, technology, entertainment, sports, science or health.

I'm not sure if this is a new feature, but Google's search app for Android shows a list of recent articles from a news site below some search results. The list uses big thumbnails and you can swipe right to find more articles.


For examples, searches for [sports], [weather], [obama] trigger the visual list of recent articles.


Google shows related news articles.


This feature also works for news-related YouTube videos.

Google's search results used to include a news section that featured relevant articles from Google News. This section was replaced by "In the News", a feature that goes beyond Google News and also shows popular YouTube videos, forum threads and posts from blogs that aren't indexed by Google News.

For example, a search for [Nexus 6] returns 3 "in the news" results and none of them is from a site currently indexed by Google News. The first result is a Nexus 6 unboxing, the second one is a blog post from XDA Developers that shows how to enable double-tap to wake and the third result is a PocketNow post about re-enabling tethering.


A search for [gifs] returns 3 results from reddit, which is not indexed by Google News:


Back in October, a Google spokesperson said: "We will be pulling from all over the web which means that we will present as diverse a range of voices as possible to ensure we get users to the answer they are looking for."

The downside is that Google sometimes shows non-news videos and threads, but there's a good side to this: Google's news results are more comprehensive and original sources are included.

Sometimes you want to find more about a topic and you find a lot of superficial news articles and blog posts that keep rehashing the same information. Google shows a list of in-depth articles for some queries, but this feature seems to be restricted to the US and it's only displayed for some queries.

How to manually trigger Google's in-depth section? Just add &tbs=ida:1&gl=us to a Google search URL and you'll see a list of 10 in-depth articles from sites like Wall Street Journal, New York Times‎, Wired, New Yorker, Slate and more. Some examples: [Google], [Daft Punk], [robots], [Russia], [happy].

Google added a new search card for news-related searches. It's display in the right sidebar and it doesn't replace the list of Google News results. For example, when searching for [Jill Duggar], Google shows a thumbnail, a short summary ("Jill Duggar and her new husband, Derick Dillard, are expecting their first child"), a link to a news article and a list of related searches.


The new card seems to be displayed for some people in the news, but only if they don't have their own Knowledge Graph cards with information from sites like Wikipedia. It's probably just an experiment, since it's rarely displayed.

{ via Search Engine Land }

For general queries like [global warming], [love], [Mandela], [China], Google shows some in-depth news articles at the bottom of the first page of results. Until now, Google only included 3 articles, but this has changed: you can click "more in-depth articles" and get 5 more articles.


Google also added some related queries you can explore to find other related articles. Clicking the "explore" links sends you to a page that places in-depth articles at the top, but also shows regular search results. Google adds &ida_m=1 to the search URL.


{ Thanks, Rubén. }

Google tests a card-style interface for the Google News OneBox. It's bigger, snippets are shorter, there's a lot of white space and the link to Google News search results is placed at the bottom of the card.

Here's a screenshot of a Google France search results page:


{ Thanks, Frédéric. }

If you search for a broad topic like [love], [global warming], [censorship], [North Korea], Google shows 3 in-depth news articles at the bottom of the first search results pages. It's an effort to go beyond promoting recent news articles and reward news sites that write detailed articles and in-depth analyses.

Here's an example for [recession]: 3 long articles from Esquire, New York Times and Forbes.


The results for [amazon prime] include a Gizmodo article.


The results for [startups] include a TechCrunch article from April 2012 about the top startup ecosystems.


The first in-depth result for [cloud computing] is a 2007 Businessweek article about Google. It's called "Google and the Wisdom of Clouds".


"To understand a broad topic, sometimes you need more than a quick answer. Our research indicates perhaps 10% of people's daily information needs fit this category - topics like stem cell research, happiness, and love, to name just a few. (...) I'm happy to see people continue to invest in thoughtful in-depth content that will remain relevant for months or even years after publication. This is exactly what you'll find in the new feature. In addition to well-known publishers, you'll also find some great articles from lesser-known publications and blogs," says Google's Pandu Nayak.

There's a help center article that offers more information about this feature. "While the feature is based on algorithmic signals, there are steps you can take as a webmaster to help Google find your high-quality, in-depth content and best present it to users in the search." Google suggests to use schema.org article markup, Google authorship markup, logos and content that can be accessed without subscription.

Google News has a similar section that's called "spotlight", but it only includes recent news articles. "The Spotlight section of Google News is updated periodically with news and in-depth pieces of lasting value. These stories, which are automatically selected by our computer algorithms, include investigative journalism, opinion pieces, special-interest articles, and other stories of enduring appeal. To access the stories in this section, just click Spotlight on the left side of the page."

Google tests an updated version of the Google News OneBox, with bigger thumbnails. The images are really big and I find them distracting. Another change is that the first link no longer sends you to a Google News search results page, it points to a news article and borrows its title.


Here's the existing interface:


{ Thanks, Michel. }

If you don't like the tablet interface for Google News, there's a non-obvious way to switch to the desktop interface. Tap the "gear" button from the top-right of the page, select "Settings", uncheck "Use the new Google News (uncheck to revert to the old version)" and then tap "Save changes".


The tablet interface was launched in December 2012 and the goal was to add support for gestures. "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." Google News for tablets is only available for English editions.


(<offtopic>Google Now Voice Search in a Forbes article? Really? From the article: "Google announced on Monday that the Google Now voice search capability is now available for your iPhone or iPad. The Google Now service is often compared to Apple's Siri – both are considered virtual personal assistants that will work by natural language voice commands." There are at least two mistakes: Google launched Google Now for iOS, not voice search, and Google Now has nothing to do with voice search.</offtopic>)

When Google redesigned Google News and other services, the "Web Search" button seemed extraneous and it was removed.

Google News is the latest Google service that gets a new design consistent with Google+. There's a new color scheme, more white space, a new header and two buttons that replace the customization links.

It's strange to see the label-less blue search button next to the "search the Web" button. Gmail's new interface uses two buttons that are easier to differentiate, instead of confusing users. There's a lot of wasted space at the top of the page and the two new buttons are too prominent, especially if you consider that you'll not use them very often.


In a recent Google+ post, Larry Page said that Google has launched a "beautiful, consistent and simpler design". He continued: "Google+ is also a great example of another focus of mine - beautiful products that are simple and intuitive to use and was actually was one of the first products to contain our new visual redesign." A New York Times blog post quotes Patrick Pichette, Google's CFO, who concludes that "there was just too much clutter. Larry in the last 90 days basically said, 'Hey, it's just time to re-shift. Don't lose any insights into the deep engineering that we drive, but let's make sure we don't lose focus on the ease of use."

{ Thanks, Anthony. }

Google News added a feature that could encourage users to read more: collectible 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," informs Google.


Google created more than 500 badges, so it's very likely that you'll collect at least one of them if you visit Google News frequently. Badges reward people that constantly read articles on a certain topic, so you're more likely to receive a badge if you read 3-4 articles a day about Google than if you read 10 articles about Google every 3-4 days.

While this feature could encourage users to visit Google News more often, the main purpose is to find people that know a lot of things about certain topics. "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," suggests Google.

Instead of manually adding your favorite topics to your profile, you could add Google News badges. It's one way to show your expertise and it could be useful if Google plans to integrate Aardvark with Google+ and launch a social Q&A service.

Badges also help you find your favorite Google News topics and add customized sections to the homepage. Google News now uses sliders to let you fine tune your personalized hompepage.





If you don't like badges, there's an option in the Google News settings page that lets you disable this feature.

{ Thanks, Jason. }

Google News has a redesigned interface that tries to remove the visual clutter and make multimedia content more discoverable. All Google News clusters are collapsed by default, except for the top news story. Clusters include more links, a special section for images and videos, but you have to manually expand 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," explains Google.


By default, Google uses the single column view, but you can switch to the two column view with the added benefit of going back to the old interface. Here's the new interface:


... and the classic interface:



The redesigned UI shows a single news article instead of a group of related articles. Although the cluster is still available, it's strange to see that Google hides one of the main features of Google News: grouping articles about the same topic. As Krishna Bharat, the founder of Google News, has recently said, the service "groups news articles by story, thus providing visual structure and giving users access to diverse perspectives from around the world in one place".

Power users can try Google's keyboard shortcuts (j/k for navigating to the next/previous story, o/u for expanding/collapsing a story), but most users will rarely expand stories and only click the main news article.

Barry Schwartz spotted some new options that let you personalize Google News. If you go to the Google News settings page, you can tweak Google News to show fewer press releases, more blog posts or even hide all the blog posts and press releases. "The neat part of the control of how you see blog and press release results is that there is a lever. You can pick from None to Fewer to Normal to More. Everyone by default is set to normal," says Barry Schwartz.

You can also disable the automatic refresh of the Google News homepage. By default, Google reloads the page every 15 minutes.


I tried to hide all the blog posts and press releases, but this only worked for search results. Google News sections still included blog posts and press releases:

Opera Mini is one of the most popular mobile browsers, but not many websites optimize their interface for Opera Mini. Most Google services have two mobile interfaces: a basic WAP interface and a more advanced interface for smartphones. Opera Mini always displays the basic interface because the browser is actually a thin client that can't handle web apps properly. Fortunately, there's an exception to this rule: Google News shows the smartphone interface in Opera Mini.


"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," informs Google.

Google's blog post ignores that Opera Mini is also available for iOS, Android, Symbian and other mobile operating systems, so it's not just a browser for feature phones. Opera Mini is really useful while roaming, for slow Internet connections and for data capped mobile contracts. Hopefully, Google News won't be the only Google service optimized for Opera Mini and Google services like Google Docs, Google Calendar, Picasa Web Albums will fully support Opera's desktop browser.

Google News has a new section that lists the most shared articles. It's not clear if Google counts the number of people who used the sharing feature from Google News or tracks the references from Twitter and other social sites, but Google's chart is not very reliable. When I started to write this post, the most popular news article was a story about Google's Groupon acquisition that has been shared by 2,189 people.


15 minutes later, the most popular article was a NASA press release shared by 10,893 people.


{ Thanks, Cougar Abugado. }

Google News continues to integrate with Twitter and other microblogging services. After testing a section that shows newsworthy tweets from your subscription, Google started to add to the Google News Onebox the number of times a story has been shared.


For example, Google's Onebox shows that this article about Google TV has been shared by more than 50 Twitter users. Google links to the realtime results for this article, but the page only includes 10 results.

Google News experiments with a new feature that shows Twitter messages from your friends.

"Friends is an experimental section in the side column that helps you find news articles that your friends are sharing on Twitter. In the open text box, enter your Twitter username and click "Save." Google News will refresh, and you will see a list of updates containing news articles shared by the people you follow. Please note that Friends only shows you articles that can be found in Google News. If someone you follow has shared an article or a link that cannot be found in Google News, then you will not see that update in the Friends section."



Maybe in the future Google News will use your Twitter timeline to customize the list of news articles displayed on the homepage or to annotate news clusters.