Google News

At the time of this writing, Google News (http://news.google.com) culls over 4,500 news sourcesfrom the Scotsman to the China Daily, from the New York Times to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The front page, is updated algorithmically without any involvement by puny humansaside, of course, from those writing the news in the first placeseveral times a day. The "most relevant news" rises to the top.

Stories are organized into clusters, drawing together coverage and photographs from various news sources around the Web. Click the "all n related" link for a list of all stories falling within that cluster. Click "sort by date" to see how the story unfolded across sources over time.

All of this doesn't apply just to the front page, but to all the newspaper-like sections within: World, U.S., Business, Sci/Tech, Sports, Entertainment, and Health.

Google News Search Syntax

When you search Google News, the default is to search for your query keywords anywhere in the news article's headline, story text, source, or URL.

Google News supports the following special search syntax:

intitle:

Finds words in an article headline:

intitle:beckham

An allintitle: variation finds stories in which all the search keywords appear in an article headlineeffectively the same as using intitle: before each keyword:

allintitle:miners strike benefits

intext:

Finds search terms in the body of a story:

intext:"crude oil"

An allintext: variation finds stories in which all the search keywords appear in article texteffectively the same as using intext: before each keyword:

allintext:US stocks rebound

inurl:

Looks for particular keywords in a news story's URL:

ipod inurl:reuters

source:

Finds articles from a particular source. Unfortunately, Google News does not offer a list of its over 4,500 sources, so you have to guess a little. Also, you need to replace any spaces in the source's name with underscore characters; e.g., the New York Times becomes new_york_times (case-insensitive):

miners source:international_herald_tribune
"international space station" source:new_york_times

location:

Filters articles from sources located in a particular country or state. For country names consisting of more than one word, replace any spaces with underscore characters; e.g., South Africa becomes south_africa (case-insensitive). In the case of state names, use official abbreviations such as ca for California and id for Idaho:

"organic farming" location:france
election 2004 location:ca

Advanced News Search

Google Advanced News Search, is much like the Advanced Web Search. It provides access to the Google News special syntax from the comfort of a web form. Notice the set of fields and pull-down menus associated with Date; use these to search for articles published in the last hour, day, week, month, or between any two particular days.

Fill in the fields, click the Search button, and notice how your query is represented in the search box on the results page.

Making the Most of Google News

The best thing about Google News is its clustering capability. On an ordinary news search engine, a breaking news story can overwhelm search results. For example, in late July 2002, a story broke that hormone replacement therapy might increase the risk of cancer. Suddenly, using a news search engine to find the phrase "breast cancer" was an exercise in futility, because dozens of stories around the same topic were clogging the results page.

This doesn't happen when you search the Google News engine because Google groups similar stories by topic. You'd find a large cluster of stories about hormone replacement therapy, but they'd be in one place, leaving you to find other news about breast cancer.

Some searches cluster easily; they're specialized or tend to spawn limited topics. But other queries (such as "George Bush") spawn lots of results and several different clusters. If you need to search for a famous name or a general topic (such as crime), narrow your search results in one of the following ways:

• Add a topic modifier that will significantly narrow your search results, as in: "George Bush" environment crime arson.

• Limit your search with one of the special syntaxes. For example: intitle:"George Bush".

• Limit your search to a particular source. Be aware that while this works well for a major breaking news story, you might miss local stories. If you're searching for a major American story, CNN is a good choice (source:cnn). If the story you're researching is more international in origin, the BBC works well (source:bbc_news).

Receiving Google News Alerts

Google Alerts keep tabs on your Google News searches, notifying you if any news stories appear that match your search criteria. They're easy to set up, alter, and deleteand they're free.