New tools and features to support local news

New product features for news

We have a number of new news features coming to Google Search to help readers find content from local publishers even more easily than before. First, we’re expanding a feature that we initially launched for COVID searches. Readers will soon see a carousel of local news stories when Google finds local news coverage relevant to their query. This carousel will be available globally in all languages and helps readers easily find stories near them from local news publishers. The feature helps local publishers by adding another way for their essential reporting to reach the community that needs it most.

Over the past few months, we’ve also been working on improving our systems so authoritative local news sources appear more often alongside national publications, when relevant, in our general news features such as Top Stories. This improvement ensures people will see authoritative local stories when they’re searching for news, helping both the brand and the content of news publishers reach more people.

In addition, we have improved the local news experience by refining our ability to understand topics beyond just broad areas, like sports, to narrower subtopics, such as football and high school football. When paired with our location signals, this helps readers get more relevant material for the topics they are searching. For example, if you’re in Detroit and search for football, we’ll now show you results for local high school and college teams, rather than just showing you results for, say, the professional team.

Source