Easier-to-use news sitemaps

Posted by Andy Golding, News Engineering Team

Hey news publishers, have you checked out Google's Webmaster Tools lately? Did you know that you can submit a sitemap listing specific articles you would like us to include in Google News? Recently, we announced that this capability is available to all publishers in all Google News editions.

Today, we're excited to tell you about a change that makes it easier for publishers to create sitemaps: you can now include articles from multiple hosts in the same sitemap. For example, if you own world.mynews.com, business.mynews.com, and sports.mynews.com, you can submit a single sitemap containing articles from all three hosts; it is no longer necessary to maintain a separate sitemap for each. The sitemap itself can reside on any of the hosts. The only requirement is that all articles in the sitemap be for the same news publication. This was announced on the Webmaster Central blog last month, and we're excited to make it possible for news publishers. This should simplify the process of sitemap submission for many of you.

Going forward, stay tuned for innovations both small and large to help make it easier for you to include your content in Google News. If you have feedback or suggestions for us, please visit our News Help group.

Now in the Czech Republic

Posted by Marián Dvorský, Software Engineer

The Czech edition of News was my first 20% project here at Google. Therefore I'm very excited to see it now live at news.google.cz.

Zprávy Google (as Google News is called in Czech) aggregates stories from hundreds of news sources in the Czech language. Stories are presented in sections similar to those in other editions. We have modified the Health section that is common to other editions to include travel and lifestyle articles as well.

I hope our Czech users will find the edition useful. For me it is now time to move on to an another exciting 20% project.

To sign in, or not to sign in: that is the question

Posted by Greta Ghizzo Van Everen, News Support Team

If you rely on getting your daily dose of news from your personalized Google News homepage, here are a couple of things you can do to access it from anywhere in the world. In case you're not familiar, personalizing your Google News homepage allows you to create custom sections that contain stories on a specific topic. You can also add standard sections (such as Business or World) from other regional and language editions. It's a great way to get all of the news you want in one place!

The easiest way to manage your personalized News page is by signing in to your Google Account. This will allow you to access your news page from any computer in the same way you would log in to your Gmail account. Signing in also lets you switch across to our other services quickly and easily. For instance, if you’ve just finished checking your messages on Gmail and want to switch to reading the latest news, all you need to do is click on the News tab that is displayed at the top of the page and you’ll be redirected to your personalized Google News page.

The neat thing about Google News is that it lets you personalize your News page even if you decide not to sign in to your Google Account. However, keep in mind that by choosing this option, you’ll only be able to save and view your personalized News page only from the computer you’re using. Therefore, if you’ve personalized your News page on your work computer, you won’t be able to view it using your home computer.

Another limitation of not signing in to your Google Account is that you’ll lose all the settings and changes made to your news page any time you clear your cookies. To prevent this from happening, after you’re done customizing your news page, you can click on the link at the bottom of the homepage that says "Share your personalized News with a friend" and send it to yourself. By saving the URL of this version of Google News in your Inbox, you can access your personalized Google News page from other computers by simply retrieving the email that was sent to you. Just remember to resend this link to yourself anytime you make changes to your news page so that you’ll always have the most up-to-date URL of your personalized Google News homepage.

If you feel this is too much of a hassle, then I recommend you sign in to your Google Account to create your personalized News page. It’s easier, faster and only one click away from Gmail and all other Google products.

Add Google News to Your Site

Posted by Mark Lucovsky, Software Engineer

If you are a web site owner, a blogger, or a professional site designer, take a look at the latest creation from the AJAX Search API team. With just a few clicks, anyone can configure and add a sleek looking Google NewsBar to their site.



The NewsBar is designed with your needs in mind. It can be configured in a horizontal mode where it delivers a continuous stream of news headlines to your site. The vertical mode delivers both news headlines and snippets. The NewsBar is perfect for your topical sites or blogs. For instance, if you are following the Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton race, try this NewsBar.

If you are a professional developer and want to use some of the more advanced features of the NewsBar, there is a complete developer guide that will walk you through all of the options. If you run a blog on Blogger, the NewsBar is already built in. To add it to your blog, just edit your blog's layout, and add the "Newsreel" page element.

A few controls that might complement your use of the NewsBar are, The YouTube VideoBar, The LocalSearch Control for Google Maps, the Slideshow Control, and the Dynamic Feed Control.

Get your news fix on your iGoogle page

Posted by Kevin Liu, Jin-Ho Kim, Jaeho Kang, Software Engineers

Lots of people love small, portable, sexy gadgets, and that's exactly what we've just created. We're not talking hardware, of course -- what we're introducing is the iGoogle News gadget.

The iGoogle News gadget shows your favorite Google News in a small-screen format, complete with news headlines, snippets, and thumbnails, grouped by news clusters. If you're really into a particular story, there are links to see the full text and related news in a cluster, or more stories in the same category.

It's easy to add the gadget to iGoogle so you can read daily news alongside your mail and other favorite feeds. It can also be displayed on partner sites, or even added on your own web pages using iGoogle syndication technology.

The iGoogle News gadget uses tabs to display different news sections separately in its own tabs, and you can customize the news sections you want to see. You can also create custom sections by entering query terms in the "edit settings tab" (the "+" tab). The gadget allows you to reorder tabs by dragging and dropping, just as you can do with gadgets on your iGoogle page.



You can also select the news editions you want to see and easily add multiple news gadgets to your iGoogle page. Customize each of them, and enjoy reading Google News from multiple countries at a glance. The new News gadget has been localized to 19 languages and supports 38 News editions (more coming). We've also added it to iGoogle as a default gadget on several domains. Add it to your existing iGoogle page.We hope you enjoy this gadget, and as always, we welcome your feedback.

Google News goes social

Posted by Tina Huang and Dan Meredith, News Team Engineers

Whether it is from our homepage, one of our RSS feeds, or on a mobile device, Google News seeks to connect people with the news that matters to them -- wherever they may be. As part of that goal we are pleased to announce the Google News Application for Facebook. This experimental application enables users to create custom sections or select from a set of pre-defined topics, then browse and share stories with their friends on Facebook. We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience. Enjoy!

Catching the news as it breaks

Posted by Abraham Epton, News Support Team

I recently moved about two thousand miles across the country, and aside from the lack of good pizza, one of the most disorienting things about having moved is not knowing what's going on back home. That's why I'd like to tell you about one of my favorite Google tools, Google Alerts, which makes staying current as simple as checking your email every morning.

I use Alerts to keep track of news about Chicago politics, but the beauty of Alerts is that you can use it to look for anything that appears in a news story, blog post, Google Groups thread or anywhere else on the Internet. Just go to google.com/alerts and enter the term or terms you're interested in, along with the sources you'd like to see results from, how often you want to receive the alerts and your email address. You can create up to 1,000 alerts per email address, and you can update your preferences at any time by following the links at the bottom of any Alerts email you receive.

However, you can use Alerts for much more than checking up on shenanigans in the 1st Ward. If you're in a media-sensitive environment, such as a political or public relations campaign, you can create alerts that let you know whenever you or your client appear in the headlines - as soon as the story breaks. You can be the first to know when something happens to your favorite baseball player, when a review appears for a new movie you'd like to see, or when a new lolcats site goes live.

But Alerts are also very useful for news publishers and webmasters who want to track the inclusion of their content in Google News. Using our search operators -- like the site: operator, which returns search results from a specific domain (i.e. searching for "site:nytimes.com" will return all articles from the New York Times) -- a news publisher can get a daily email listing a selection of articles from their site that made it into Google News. And of course, anyone can use Alerts to notify them when a new post goes live on their favorite news site, or when something happens involving one of their competitors.

With millions of pages being updated every day on the still-nascent Web, it can be difficult for mere mortals to stay up-to-date. Thankfully, with Alerts, you can rely on the world's largest search engine to help you out.