26. Get the News with Google News

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The circulation of daily newspapers has been shrinking at an alarming rate, and with good reasonmore and more people are using the Internet to get their news.

No doubt, Google News has contributed to the number of people who read news online. It collates news reports from reputable sources all over the worldeverything from major daily newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, to international news sources such as the BBC News and international news agencies such as Reuters, to TV news sites such as CNN and ABC news, to local newspapers not only in the United States, but in many other countries as well. It's the single best place online to get your newsand possibly the single best place anywhere.

The news is constantly updated on the Google News site, so you always get the latest news. You can also customize the site to deliver the exact news you want when you want it. This task shows you how to get the most out of it. Make sure to log in to your Google account if you want to get the most out of using Google News.

Go to Google News

When you type http://news.google.com in your browser's address bar, you go to the Google News site. Alternatively, click the News link at the top of the main Google page. There you see the top news stories, when the page was last updated with news, and news in many categories.

Browse Through Stories

The main stories on the page have synopses underneath them, and if there are multiple reports about the same event, you are shown links for each separate report. Choose which source to read by clicking the desired link.

Scroll down the page to see the top stories in various categories, such as World, U.S. Sci/Tech, Business, and so on.

The left side of the Google News page lists the top news categories. Click any category and you go to a new page with a listing of the top stories in that category.

Note

If you want to read stories of the most interest to places in the world other than the United Statesin that country's native languagechoose the country from the drop-down box next to Top Stories at the top of the display area and click Go.

Search for Stories

You can search for news stories on Google News. Type your search term or terms into the search box at the top of the page and click Search News. If you instead want to do a normal Google search, click Search the Web.

For best results, do an advanced news search by clicking the Advanced News Search link. You are able to target your search by searching only through specific news sources, only through articles from news sources in specific countries or states, by the date the article was published, and even where your search terms appear (for example, in the headline, body, URL, or anywhere in the article).

Customize Google News

If you'd like to change the order of the categories on the Google News page, you can customize the way the page appears when you open it. Click the Customize this page link; a box appears with small boxes inside it representing each of the news categories. Hover your mouse over a category you want to move, and a four-sided arrow appears. Drag the category to where you want it to appear on the page and release the mouse to drop the category in its new location. Click Save layout when you're done.

You can also change how many items appear in each category. Click the category link, and from the Customize this page box that appears, choose the number of stories you want to appear on the page from the Stories drop-down list. You can also have the section display news from a different part of the world by choosing the country from the Edition drop-down list. If you don't want this news category to appear on the page, delete it by checking the box next to Delete section. Click Save changes when you're done, or click Cancel to cancel your changes.

In addition, you can add an entirely new, customized section that displays news about only a specific topic. After you've clicked Customize this page, click the Add a custom section link. Type a word or words that describes the customized news in which you're interested, select how many items you want displayed, and then click Add section. The new section now appears on your page.

Get News Alerts

One of the most powerful features of Google News is its capability to deliver news to your email inbox so you don't actually have to visit Google News to get the news. All you have to do is log into your email service.

To create a news alert that generates an email message to you, click the News Alerts link. From the Create a Google Alert page that appears, type the term or terms that describe the news you want to track, select the type of articles you're interested in from the Type drop-down list (you can choose from News, Web, News & Web, and Groups), select how often you want the news delivered (choose from once a day, when it occurs, or weekly), type your email address, and click Create Alert. From now on, you get links to the kind of news you described, on the schedule you've chosen, delivered to your inbox.

You can create multiple alerts in this way. To manage your alerts and edit them, sign into your Google account, and go to www.google.com/alerts/manage.