• Nieman Lab, Friday, July 1, 2011 12:04 PM

In its mission to offer the perfect news service -- and, in turn, further displace rivals from Yahoo News to The New York Times -- Google News has been making strides to help user delve deeper in particular news events. "Last month, Google News tweaked its interface to make it easier for users both to scan for stories that might interest them and to dig deeper conce they've found them," The Nieman Journalism Lab explains.

"The Top Story on Google News at any given moment is now expanded -- which is to say, visually contextualized, with clustered links and multimedia offerings -- by default." The expansion-default user interface emphasizes the diversity of coverage surrounding a given news event, Andre Rohe, lead engineer for Google News, tells NJL.

Links included in an expanded cluster might include opinion pieces, local and international news, in-depth articles, satire pieces, and even highly cited pieces. Relevant Wikipedia articles are also included since, according to Rohe, Wikipedia can often offer good context for news stories, and occasionally even offer news coverage itself.

Read the whole story at Nieman Lab »