Finding relevant news stories: the Google News Engine
By Gillian Kerr, RealWorld Systems
The information in this article is current as of May 10, 2003.
Google is doing some very interesting things these days. Given the huge growth of the web, good search tools are not only essential, they need to be increasingly complex to help us handle the massive amounts of information that are available to us. Google's sophisticated search tools are being applied to several services that may be surprisingly useful to organizations.
In particular, Google has begun offering a news service that I have become
completely addicted to. Though it is still being tested, it is already so
powerful that it may change the way many of us search for news stories. It's
at news.google.com, or you can also get
there by going to www.google.com and then
clicking on the 'News' link on the top menu.
When you first go to news.google.com, it may look much like any other news
site. It lists the top stories, then business, sports, health, and so on.
But try searching for a specific topic, like the name of your agency or an
issue of interest (try YMCA Canada, or "West Nile" Toronto). Note that you
can sort the results by relevance or by date. Last month I used Google News
to track SARS information, and could get minute by minute updates on what
was happening around the world.
Google News searches over 4,500 news sources worldwide (which means they have
a decent Canadian presence, unlike most news sites) and sorts stories automatically
by topic and relevance. The stories are not chosen by human editors - they
are constantly updated, many times a day, based on algorithms that search
for importance. Issues that are covered by hundreds of news sources will rise
quickly to the top of the page. Stories are covered for only 30 days. Google
News is being used by professional journalists to locate stories of rising
importance, and also to quickly find a variety of perspectives on any given
topic. One of the many terrific features is the ability to click on the link
that leads to all the related stories on a given issue. This is a quick way
to get a feel for the ways that the issue is being covered in the press. For
example, I've been tracking the new research on the relationship between obesity
and heart disease, and while the American press focus on U.S. studies, the
British press emphasize studies carried out in the U.K.
Agencies can use this service to check for news relating to their own organizations (Google or someone else will need to develop an automatic updating service because it would be great for media relations folks and anyone involved in competitive intelligence.) By the way, while you're checking whether your agency is in the news, also check whether it is being mentioned in Internet newsgroups by clicking on 'Groups' in the top menu. Anyone who is embroiled in a public scandal should be using these search tools to follow what's happening. To save your custom search so that you can bring up the relevant Google news search any time, bookmark the web page after you have done your search. You will have to press the 'refresh' button every time you go to it in order to pull up the most recent news stories.
While you're on Google, take a look at its various services and tools, including
focused searches in most North American university sites, as well as translations
and other language tools. The Google interface is available in about 100 languages,
including Klingon.
Finally, there's a Google service that's making some people uneasy. If you enter any listed U.S. phone number into the main Google search box, it will give you the person's name, address, and maps with driving instructions. Canadian phone numbers aren't included yet, but they may be later. Even public search engines are starting to encroach on individual privacy.
** News flash ** Google added a Canadian News service on May 12 - see news.google.ca.
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Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.
President, RealWorld Systems
gkerr at realworldsystems.net
Read my weblog at http://blog.realworldsystems.net
