New Google News Settings and Source Look Ups

Google News has new search settings available that provide several new features. It lets searchers choose to specify certain news sources for exclusion or from which to get more or less news. In addition, for those news sources tagged as (blog) or (press release), searchers can also request exclusion of those whole groups, or fewer or more from either. While the blog limit has been available in the left hand margin for awhile, there is not other location to limit to press releases or to exclude them (the advanced news search does not have these options). Some are concerned that these new settings will cause users to exclude blogs and press releases (see Danny's comments on this in his Look Out Blogs: Google News Gains Options To Drop Blogs & Press Releases post).

Want to see these settings? Unlike a Google web search, where search settings can be saved as a cookie and do not require the searcher to log in, the new News settings require first logging in to an account. You also must be using the U.S. version.

While I am not yet sure if I'll use any of these settings on a regular basis, there is another great reason to log in and explore these settings. It finally provides a way to search within the sources for Google News. While others have compiled various lists, such as the recent list of sources compiled at Digital Inspiration, they often list sources only by their URL are typically incomplete (I checked four small news sources against that list and found at least one missing). Within the news search settings, just start typing the beginning of a source name (not just the URL), and a list of up to ten potential matches appears. Want to know if a news source is included in Google News? Log in, go to the News Settings, and start typing the first letters of the source name (and try any possible variants as well.)

See below (or check full post) for a 2.5 minute screencast of how some of these options work.