Google News Goes Local

Mary Bowling | 14 February 2008 |

There’s some good news about Google news this month. As of a week ago, searchers can go to Google News, enter a city name or zip code and receive news pertaining to that location.

Google considers the source of the news to determine relevance. For example, they know that the Aspen Times is a source of news for the Aspen area and that HeraldNet.Com is the online news site for the Everett, Washington area. In addition, Google says:

“We’re not simply looking at the byline or the source, but instead we analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located. “

Right now, the pickin’s are really slim for small towns and rural areas, but the reality is there’s often not much news associated with those places. There are days I never get past the headlines of our daily newspaper here in Glenwood Springs, Colorado because there’s nothing of interest to draw me in. However, when you live in a small town, no interesting news can be a very good thing.

The Local News results definitely need tweaking. A search for Aspen brought up and article about Aspen Ranch, which is in Loa, Utah and another about a company called Aspen Tech and their Nasdaq problems. Neither of these has the tiniest bit of relevance to Aspen Local News. From what I’ve seen, you can generally expect to get more relevant results when you put in a city name rather than a zipcode.

Fortunately, Google often releases beta versions of their search products and then rapidly improves upon them. I think we can expect that with this one, as well.
To keep up with the latest at Google News, visit the Official Google News Blog and subscribe to their RSS feed.