what is google news?

google news

                        Google News (news.google.com) attempts to be different. Rather than be limited to the views of a single publisher, Google News works on the principle that there is more than one news source for the same story. Thus, stories are grou -ped together around one news event than around any one particular news provider.           

                        The cool part is, the process is automated. Google’s computers scan over 4,500 English-language news sources to collate stories of the past 30 days and to display them according to the user’s personalization.

                        

                      With its usual gusto for content engineering, Google’s computers evaluate and rank the stories based on their heady brew of clustering algorithms using multiple parameters to judge a story’s newsworthiness. This supposedly provides one with an unbiased, non-political, non-ideologically-driven news engine that is customizable to reflect your personal interests. While detractors will say that a mix of news sources, collectively without a point of view, is like a bland dish, we like to think that Google News provides all the ingredients to whip up our own personalized dish of spicy news served to steam hot over data pipes!

        

                      But before we delve in for a deeper look at its features there may be some of you who are wondering if it is only an “English Affair.” Well, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Google News is available in a large number of international languages and regional editions. India is one of the regional editions, but with a caveat (this is the bad news): as of now, it’s only available English. Don’t be too disheartened though: as the Web becomes more” Googlified,” we hope you will be soon able to see Google News in your favorite language!

             

                     Meanwhile, recommend to Google your favorite regional language news sites by going to www.google.com/support/news /bin/request.py.

Anatomy Of A Google News Clip

              The standard Google News homepage is divided into a number of topics headlined by Top Stories, followed by eight other topics or “standard sections” as they are called, which relate to the following subject areas: World, Nation (country-specific), Business, Sci/Tech, Sports, Entertainment, Health, and Most Popular.

              

                 You search for news topics using keywords, much like you would on other Google sites. The results are displayed by relevance by default; they can also be sorted by date by clicking on the “Sort by date” link at the upper right corner. Also, all Google News search results can be distributed as an RSS feed  the search keywords can be used to personalize your Google News homepage, and the search keywords can also be used to create e-mail alerts

           

               Each news clip displays a text snippet from the Web site of the highest ranked (by Google) news source. Clicking on the headline will take you directly to the Web site with the news story. Immediately below the text snippet, clickable headlines to the same story from the second- and third-ranked news Web site are displayed.

             

              If you are on a slow connection, you can speed up the display somewhat by switching to the text only version: click on the “Text Version” link in the left pane. You can control the display of text snippets and thumbnails plus lots more by using the customization and personalization features that Google News supports.

                                   Personalisation

Multiple Personalised Versions Of Google News

1. Sign out of Google.

2. Click on the “Customize (or Personalize) this page” link and customize it as you want to see it 

3. Save your changes 

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the “Share your personalized news with a friend” link. A yellow box will expand on the page with the unique link address for your personalized homepage. Bookmark the link and rename the bookmark to something descriptive. You can even store it in your Google Bookmarks. 

 5. Even better, you can add the links to your favorite feed reader and keep getting the news feeds delivered directly. Be sure to rename the feed title to distinguish it from regular Google News feeds. 

6. Clear the personalized settings and repeat with whatever variations you want.

Searching Google News

         As with other Google search services, Google News supports most of the search operators listed in. As far as the text operators go, however, Google News is limited to the following: allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:, intext:, intitle:, inurl:, location:, and source:. The operator's location: and source: are limited to Google News, and they can be used as follows:

Operator	Meaning	Example	Explanation
source:	Limit search to the specified source	Zune source: times_of_india	Search for the news stories with the word “Zune” restricted to the news source “Times of India”
location:	Limit search to specific country or US state	Zune location: India	Search for news stories with the word “Zune” restricted to the news location “India”

News Archive Search

               News Archive Search (http://news.google.com/archivesearch) is one of the most innovative features of Google News.

                 With archive search, you can even get access to news reports that are as many as 200 years old! Google’s aim with News Archive Search is to enable users to search its news archives for historical content related to almost anything. Ideas, events, people are all searchable for a historical perspective spanning multiple news sources that will give you a flavor of the era better than any history book! The results can also include links to free articles as well as paid articles. Normally, the link title itself will suggest if there is payment involved. Clicking on a paid link will not incur any cost and you can usually see a preview or snippet of the article content before to let you decide whether it is worth paying for.