• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 9, 2016

Google plans to shine a light on local news articles in Google News by creating technology that online publishers can use when the content becomes part of national news stories.

The move, announced Monday, aims to improve Google's core News service by incorporating hyperlocal results in the news feed. News stories from local news sources will receive a "Local Source" tag on Google News on the Web, as well as on the iOS and Android apps.

Tagging is automated and is intended to identify local source articles, analyzing the physical location in which the news topic takes place. The technology compares past locations with the current article's location

"Local Source" articles are identified automatically by looking at where a publisher has written about in the past and compares that to the story location," James Morehead, product manager at Google News, explains in a blog post. Those searching on Google News will see tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News and Weather iOS and Android apps.

Google estimates that with 75,000 news sources, many publishers serving articles in Google News specialize in specific topics and locations. The local section in Google News surfaces content from regional papers to hyperlocal blogs that otherwise would not appear in national news.

Local news also helps to highlight smaller, localized advertisers -- even in google.com for desktop Web searches, as well as mobile Web local searches.

BIA/Kelsey estimates that companies will increase local media spend on desktop searches by 2.3% to $9.5 billion, from 2015 to 2020. Desktop display ads on publisher sites will rise by 32.1%, reaching $5.8 billion during the same years. Local mobile search will see the greatest lift -- about 175.2% $12.8 billion -- and mobile display by 255.3% to $7.1 billion, respectively.