Google News Timeline: a new way to search news

Posted by Emma Heald on April 21, 2009 at 11:19 AM

Google yesterday announced the introduction of Google News Timeline, which it describes as "a new feature on Google Labs that organises many different types of search results on a zoomable, graphical timeline." At the Google Labs press event, the company also revealed its new "Similar Image" feature in its image search which allows you to click on an image from your initial search results to see more like it, a week after introducing a tool that allows users to search by colour.

According to the Google News blog, the timeline tool can be used to search and browse results from Google News and its hosted news partners, and YouTube partner videos, as well as archived newspapers and magazines from Google News Archive Search and Google Book Search. Users can also choose to see search results from blogs and "sports scores, as well as information about books, music, movies, tv shows, video games, and even artists, to see how they've appeared over time." It is possible to refine the search to specific publications, or specify a date range for searches.

Essentially, the timeline feature and its possibilities provide a far more customisable, visual search experience. The announcement comes amidst growing criticism of Google from newspaper publishers and just two weeks after the Associated Press declared its intentions to improve a user's news search by creating search 'landing pages' organised by topic and key word, which would highlight authoritative local sources and aim to act as a user's guide or map to the news. Could the new Google Timeline be a competitor for the AP's planned offering? Whether it is or not, consumers will benefit from the increasing options they have for a more user-friendly, intelligent news search.

Source: Google News Blog, BBC, WebUser