People Search Digest

It may come as a shock to some, and not so much to others, but Google hasn’t always provided users with the best local news source on the net. This is why other new aggregators, namely Topix, have enjoyed some serious popularity. For those of you who don’t know, Topix is resourceful site that aggregates tens of thousands of local news sources online, and until today it was the best place online to get local news. The reason for this change? Yesterday brought news (not local) that Google is launching an added option for customized local news to its Google News Service, and when Google does something related to improving their ability to aggregate information, they don’t usually mess around.

This new feature will customize local new stories, and is now available on news.google.com. It’s a really easy service, as all you have to do is enter your post/zip code or location into the Local News box that now appears automatically when you visit the Google News site. The local news feature brings up stories based on your location and presents them in a sub-section on the main page. There is a sidebar menu entry and a dedicated page too. The results will be just like the regular Google news stories, all clustered with multiple sources on one particular story. The top stories for an area will be at the top of the results and the article rankings will take the publication’s location so that local sources are promoted. While Google News has always been more popular than Topix, it’s now going to dominate thanks to their new attention to local news.