Google launched its made-over news site last month to celebrate the seventh anniversary of Google News. The changes are both aesthetic and functional.

The search engine has taken the opportunity to develop interconnections with its partners in news provision. The section pages have been modernized with the categories such as 'Top Stories', 'Business' and 'World' incorporating featured videos and photos provided by Google's partners. The news section's multimedia format has been bolstered by areas designated for popular stories and images, found on the right side of the screen. You Tube logos have been added to news videos, so that the user can more easily identify video content. New colour frames have been added to respective sections on the homepage.

The site's User Experience Designers declared on Google News Blog that the changes aimed 'to provide a better news browsing experience and connect you to a wide variety of perspectives on current events.'

The goal of these developments is, as expressed by the designers, to 'highlight more sources and provide our users with more ways to experience the news'. Google is continually developing its news sites to secure its reputation as a leading service in online, aggregated news provision. Indeed, the Google team is having to raise its game to meet the challenges set by the recent arrival of competing search engine, Bing.

In May, the delivery of stories was reorganised into a more efficient format. Now, when the user clicks on 'All News', the stories appear with 'timely and relevant information from different sources indexed in Google News', with links, depending on the timing and coverage of the story, to relevant top articles, quotations, blogs and posts. A recent arrangement between Google and Twitter has resulted in the rapid fire posting of news stories on the Twitter newsfeed. Moreover, a timeline of articles allows users to trace the coverage history of a story. This is a particularly interesting application, with great potential as a journalistic research tool.

Source: Google News Blog