Mountain View, California — Global search engine behemoth Google has quietly added a fascinating new feature to Google News — “Follow News” option that empowers internet users the chance to bookmark articles from a particular site.
This handy little “Follow News” button appears at the top left of the organic search results, asking if you would like to bookmark certain stories you have been following and create custom sections for them to further personalized your Google News home page.
Now, when you perform a search, near the top of the results, you will see a button to follow news for that query. For instance, here is how it appeared for a search on search engine land:
Bookmarking Your Searches:
Furthermore, when you click the button, it will add that query to the topic list on the left-hand side of the screen, as well as create a custom section on the Google News homepage dedicated to that topic of Google News, like this:
So for instance, if you have been keeping tab on “Best Buy Christmas Deals,” then simply typing that into the Google News Search box, hitting enter and then clicking on the “Follow News” button on the subsequent page will add a “Best Buy Christmas Deals” link to your left column, as well as create a new cluster for it on your Google News homepage. Then again, clicking on that particular link will bring back your search results for that topic, making it an easy way to keep track of your favorite topics.
The system — which may prove very helpful for companies using search engine optimization services to produce content for their website on a regular basis — adds recent stories into relevant sections of the search engine’s News site, reports Search Engine Land.
Google has already empowered you to customize your news experience in similar ways for quite some time, but the latest button simply adds a call-to-action, and just like a call-to-action in an advertisement, it will boost clicks and further use of this kind of customization, and therefore enhance the Google News experience for users.
Also contributing to setting up custom Google News pages, the button has been confirmed as a new feature by a Google Spokesperson, according to Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz.
This comes as the second change made to Google News this month. At the beginning of December, the platform was spotted experimenting with a new social feature — the “most shared” box — displaying the stories which have been shared the most on social media platforms — though it was not clear which — the feature allowed users to filter by the past 24 hours, past week and past month.
Google has manipulated a lot over the last year to keep Google News interesting, and let us face it — the search engine leader will have to continue to do so to keep traffic from going elsewhere.