Mountain View, California — Global search engine behemoth Google on Monday introduced a few tweaks to its Google News service that lets users dig deeper on certain stories to help find the most relevant content, in an effort to make the site less cluttered and easier to customize.
The search giant’s aggregate news service unveiled a number of changes, including “expandable stories” page that collapses story clusters into a single top headline with a brief summary and more multimedia.
The new News site features a one-column default view, rather than the two-column view the site previously used. Hovering over the headline presents a click-to-expand button, which opens the related stories, though only the top headline includes a summary.
The Top Stories section now includes six or more stories, rather than three, to offer more diversity. While the first three stories are gathered algorithmically, the remainder can be compiled based on user interest. Users can personalize the page. A Web surfer can click “Edit” under “News for You” to customize it to their preference.
As the screenshot below shows, these changes were rolled out just as Donald Trump was dropping out of the presidential race.
Moreover, some associated stories are labeled with descriptions like “Highly Cited” or “In Depth” to help readers get a sense of the article before they click.
Google News has a new look. (Credit: Google)
In addition, the site now embellished with more video and photo content as well. And Google has included the ability to share articles quickly over social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook with clickable icons below headlines.
Among the new features are:
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Click-to-Expand: Each story cluster is collapsed down to one headline with the exception of the top story. When something grabs you, click nearby anywhere but the title to expand the story box.
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Labeled Diversity: For stories you have expanded, you will see genre labels for some of the additional articles that explain why they were chosen and how they add value. For example, you might see something labeled as an “Opinion” piece or an indication that an article is “In Depth.”
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Multimedia and More: Within each expanded story box, you will find a sliding bar of videos and photos, links to related sections and easier-to-use sharing options, so you can quickly digest the sights and sounds of a news story, dig into different types of publications and share what you find interesting with one click.
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Personalized Top Stories: The Top Stories section is expanded to six or more stories from three to give you more topic diversity. The first three stories remain unpersonalized and the same as before. The rest may be personalized based on your interests. To personalize your Google News experience you can click on “Edit” under “News for you.” You can choose the “Standard Edition” if you do not want personalization.
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Less Is More: The default view is now the popular “One Column” (formerly “Section”) view. Google News merged List View into Top Stories, as described above. You can still switch to “Two Column” view, which resembles classic Google News.
Just yesterday we reported on some other changes to Google News: the News Near You feature and customizable homepage settings. Meanwhile, Google began unveiling the new features this morning and will continue throughout the day.