Google News Has Been Personalized
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Google developers are once again hard at work with the “New” Google News. Google News introduced in 2002 categorized news stories by topic with Top Stories remaining in the spotlight. The new Google News has been redesigned to emphasize personalization by allowing you to choose what you want to display and where you want it to be displayed.
The New Google News
Google’s redesign of Google News focuses on you and your needs/wants as a reader with the addition of highlighting interesting stories you otherwise may not have been exposed to. The new customizable features allow you to decide which categories you want under Top News, whether that be Business, Sports, World, etc. The biggest change and the one that Kevin Stolt is calling the “heart” of the homepage is News For You.
Google News For You
News for You is a stream of headlines that is tailored to your interests through personalization. By editing the personalization users are specifying how interested they are in a specific topic by identifying how often they read certain pre-determined categories (such as World, Business, Science, etc) through answering Never, Always or Sometimes. There is an additional feature that provides users the ability to add categories that interest them.
Google News Features
1. Viewing. Users can view stories by Section or List view.
2. Personalization.Users are asked to add their personal preferences as well as your location via zip code to highlight your local news.
3. Personalization Opt-Out. Personalization is not for everyone. Users have the option to click “Reset personalization” which clears all personalization preferences. You can always go back and edit this to opt in and personalize your page.
4 Customized Layout. The top stories as stated above will be the feature however by clicking “edit this page” you drag and drop categories. Not a business news reader, simply click on that category and check delete this section.
5. Stories Featured. Customize the number of stories within each category you wish to see by again clicking “edit this page” and the category. Within each category you can set the number of stories from 1-9.
6. Social Sharing. It would not be a Google platform without the ability to easily share, especially with the additon of Social Search to Google Buzz. The new Google News encourages sharing to Buzz, Reader, via Email, Facebook and Twitter by adding the drop-down menu which is located at the top right of each story and marked with an arrow.
The redeisgn is useful and the abililty to place the stories where I want them on my page definitely makes it more user friendly and attractive to me. Having all the topics I want to see in one place does save some time from going to each site individually.
Have you used Google News in the past? Will this be one to check out and start frequenting?
Tony said:
People actually use Google News??? No way!
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Suzanne Vara said:
Tony
Shocking, I know. This is just the beginning as this will I am sure integrated into GoogleMe when that comes out so then it will have more of an impact.
Nabeel | Create Your First Website said:
Yeah I use Google News, but this change wont effect or make any change for me.
Nabeel
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing said:
Heads-up appreciated, although I’m not much of an online news reader.
The only “news” I’m really interested in outside of business (which i get from forums, blogs, etc) is Long Island stuff…we have newspapers, tv, and even a dot com if i wish.
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Suzanne Vara said:
Dennis
Da Island! I can respect that as we are able to get so much information from other sources.
I like it as I am able to see a snippet of the news I want in one place.
@SuzanneVara
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John Fisher said:
How can I edit the new Google News page to get my personal viewing choices?
How can I add a local area section?
Reza Winandar said:
Thanks for the new Suzanne!
Probably Google is now changing their motto of being simple to being number 1 in social marketing.
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Ron Leyba said:
Big huge change, primarily for Google news publishers. Personalization is killing the small sites.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
That’s true. It really is crushing them. All the major websites are going with the ability to personalize which is great. That allows me to have more control over what I want to see.