Google News adds news localisation feature

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 February 2008 at 10:16
Tags: Journalism

Google has added an experimental new feature to its online news aggregator that presents stories relevant to a user’s location.

Users of the US version of Google News who enter a US postcode or town name will see a new panel on the site presenting news about that place.

“Our article rankings will also take into account a publication’s location so we can promote all the local sources for each story,” Google software engineers Andre Rohe and Rohit Ananthakrishna wrote on the official Google News blog.

Google News has recently added personalised news recommendations based on signed-in users’ search history and has been soliciting users responses to a series of potential new features.

Update: Techcrunch sees this as a challenge to Topix local news aggregator partially-owned by several US newspaper groups. But Topix founder Rich Skrenta has responded: “[I]t doesn’t seem like Google is going as far as Topix did in finding local references in non-local sources,” he notes.

“It’s not a particularly useful product,” says William Hartnett, the online innovations editor at The Palm Beach Post.

“To the extent that I want location-based news aggregation at all … I want it at a geographic level that’s actually of some unique use or interest.”

Mark Potts, who knows a few things about these matters, says it’s a sign that newspapers need to figure out their hyperlocal strategy.

“If you don’t have an aggressive hyperlocal strategy, you’re not going to be around in five years,” he counsels.

Tags: Journalism