WebProNews

Tag: news search

  • Google US News Gets Larger Pics and a Social Perspective

    Over the next week Google is going to be making some changes to the way US news searches appear on their pages. The first change is going to be larger images on their main page. They are also adding a real-time coverage page that will feature all the latest articles paired with relevant Google+ post to bring a social perspective to the stories. Sounds kind of interesting.

    Here’s how they explain their decision to add the social aspect to their news pages:

    “Many news stories inspire vibrant discussions on Google+, and today we’re starting to add this content to both the News homepage, and the realtime coverage pages. This way you can see what your circles, journalists covering the story and notables like politicians or others who are the subjects of stories have to say about breaking news, and even contribute to the discussion directly from Google News.”

    I don’t think it will suit everyone, but it could go a long way towards bringing a comprehensive understanding of subject matter to the coverage. Multiple perspectives are always instrumental in bringing a truer understanding of what’s being reported. It’ll probably turn some folks off, but I believe it’s a positive move, especially if Google wants to continue down the social avenues of the internet.

    In any event, it doesn’t seem like a mandatory change. They say if you want the upgrades, some of the changes are already in effect. All you have to do is follow this link and sign up.We can expect the rest of the changes throughout next week, just as i’ve already mentioned above. I think it’s worth taking a look at.

  • Another Reason for Murdoch Not to Like Google

    News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has had a lot of issues with search engines – most notably, Google. He has repeatedly threatened to block News Corp. content from search engines, but content from the Wall Street Journal, for example, still populates a significant amount of Google search results to this day.

    Interestingly, while Google has been the apparent focal point of Murdoch’s woes, News Corp. has blocked other news aggregators in the past, but not Google. 

    This week, News Corp.’s New York Post got a story wrong and pulled it down, but it’s still available in Google’s cache. It sounds like he’s pretty angry about the whole fiasco, and one can only imagine that Google still providing access to the story (with people able to link to it) probably doesn’t sit too well with him.

    Foster Kamer at the Village Voice reports on the "hot water" the Post’s newsroom found itself in:

    We received a tip earlier this afternoon: "heads might roll" by the end of the day at the New York Post’s Metro desk, as they’re in crisis mode after a humiliating correction was published this morning in the paper. Even more, that The Rage of (Post-owner) Rupert Murdoch is fueling it. What’s going on over there?

    On Monday, the New York Post published a story about "Bronx wife-killer" Johnny Concepcion, who reportedly confessed to the crime of killing his wife via text message, and then took rat poison in an attempted suicide. The crux of the Post’s story was that Concepcion was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital and given a liver transplant. The story has since been scrubbed from the Post’s site, though it’s still available to read thanks to Google Cache.

    Google Cache keeps NY Post article

    According to Politico, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has jacked up the rate it will charge the White House’s news clipping service by $600,000. The publication quotes an unnamed administration official as saying they might have to drop the Journal.

  • Google Revamps Google News Homepage

    Google has made some changes to the Google News homepage.

    "There’s an old saying that all news is local," says Google’s Kevin Stolt. "But all news is personal too—we connect with it in different ways depending on our interests, where we live, what we do and a lot of other factors. Today we’re revamping the Google News homepage with several changes designed to make the news that you see more relevant to you."

    This video pretty much sums it up:

    More info here.

    The new version of the page is rolling today in English in the U.S. This will be extended over the next few months. Google will also make the ability to choose which sources you see more or less often available in all English-language versions of the site.

  • Bing Highlights Why You’ve Been Using Google News

    Along with many other features Bing has launched this week, it has revamped Bing News, which now includes some new features.

    For one, you can set your local hometown to get headlines from. Google has let you do this for quite some time, but Bing hasn’t, and now it does. Although you can include multiple locations in your Google News mix if you wish.

    Bing News Gets New features

    But that’s not all…

    "You can easily tab through the details on the top stories, see more stories ‘above the fold’ and get the details of local weather," says Bing Senior Product Manager Jacquelyn Krones. "Now it’s the perfect place to start your day: get the headlines, figure out what to wear based on the forecast, and really get into the details on stories that interest you the most."

    "For instance, let’s say that you are very interested in what Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is doing in Silicon Valley," she adds. "We’ve revamped our ‘story page’ for those times when you can’t get enough of a specific news event."

    A story page will show several stories from various sources, sorted by best match. You can also switch it to most recent.  There is also a "latest stories" module that shows a timeline that indicates how many stories related to the topic were published throughout the week.

  • Google Explains Recrawling for Updated News

    Google has a post up on the Google News blog today talking a little bit about how it recrawls news content in order to provide the most up to date content and eliminate dead links.

    "How do you balance looking for new content against the need to update older content? How can you make sure the content is fresh, doesn’t link to dead pages or display headlines that have been changed by the publisher?" asks Google.

    Dewey Defeats TrumanGoogle’s answer is that it has implemented a recrawl feature that lets it focus on getting the newest content, while displaying the most current version of older content. After Google News discovers an article, it will continue to crawl it repeatedly to look for changes. In the first day, it will actually recrawl it more frequently, because as the company says, the most changes are usually made to news stories soon after they’re published.

    "In some cases, we’ll even revisit articles we had trouble crawling the first time around," says Google. "After that, we visit them less often. Either way, we try hard to present users with the freshest news. (We bet whoever wrote "Dewey Defeats Truman" wishes they had recrawl!)."

    Google says the feature is intended to reduce the number of outdated headlines and dead links, and for publishers, it will provide assurance that Google will index the latest stories and updates as soon as possible.

    Related Articles:

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    > Minds of the Media Gather to Discuss Future of News

    > Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.