Google Testing Google News Personalization

Google news

Google has been experimenting with personalizing Google News, and MediaPost got a look at the proposed layout Friday. The Mountain View, Calif. search engine has been running tests on the design of Google News for the past several months.

The new design places trending topics down the left rail with top stories, several in each category, in the middle column and local news on the right. Trending topics, which Twitter began using from the start, allow people to see the top searches at a glance.

Click on a trending topic and the link takes you to a personalized page filled with news on the left and still images and/or videos on the right.

About halfway down the home page, Google asks those signed in to choose their interests. Telling Google how often you like to read news from each section in the list -- from World to U.S. to Business to Social Networks -- will determine how the search engine will personalize the page.

"At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on our Web sites all over the world," says a Google spokesperson. "Right now, we are running a small test of a new Google News home page design."

Personalization has been a major push for Google, as well as Yahoo and Microsoft. It helps advertisers better target ads, from paid search to display.

 

2 comments about "Google Testing Google News Personalization".
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  1. Laurie Sullivan from lauriesullivan, May 29, 2010 at 11:15 a.m.

    It took a few spins around the block to get use to the new design, but I like it.

  2. Ethan Houser, May 29, 2010 at 12:45 p.m.

    This new Google News format is beyond horrible. I am stuck with it and am looking for another news homepage.

    There is not one improvement. What were they thinking???

    The worst part is that it is so hard to scan--and this isn't just that I'm not used to it. For one thing there is only one column instead of two, and all text has disappeared from below the headlines (except top stories) and you have to drag the cursor over the article you're interested in to see anything beyond the headline.

    In short, it sucks.

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