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How bad is the new Google News for you?

Jérôme [PersonRank 10]

Friday, August 6, 2010
13 years ago4,978 views

It's now completely irrelevant to me.
http://imgur.com/HFAUs.png

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

On the US version, when I use the link "near to you" (geo=detect_metro_area) and it detects me as living in Lens, France. But all articles are related to contact lenses and camera lenses.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

Most likely, the section includes the search results for [France], not news from France.

You should click on "add section", type "France" next to "Add a local section" and you'll read more interesting news articles.

Jérôme [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

Oh, I thought they replaced this page with the "News for you" box, where you can add sections but can't customize them. Thanks for the 'fix', Alex!

If they really need to duplicate features without consistency, they should at least put a link to this page in the personalization box.

I've just sent a *nice* feedback to the team via this form: http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=1006082.

que [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

When I typed in my zip code in the Local section of Advanced Search, the first result is for an obituary listing page from an online newspaper. Also, there were several local high school sports stories. Nothing newsworthy really – just generic run of the mill stories.

However, the larger city near me generally returns better results. However, I think their local news is still lacking enough quality signals or algorithm optimization to generate really compelling results. Especially local news in smaller towns or cities.

Jérôme [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

All the current headlines in the local news section for Île-de-France – the name of Paris metropolitan area – are totally irrelevant.

There are 2 stories from badzine.info in page 1. It's a badminton webzine, and the reason why those stories are featured is the word "Paris" appearing somewhere in the articles. This is the top 6 story: "GREAT BRITAIN – Andy Wood becomes new Head Coach" http://www.badzine.info/index.php/news/newsflash/2644-great-britain-andy-wood-becomes-new-head-coach.html...

There are also 5 stories from 'Yahoo! Eurosport UK', even though I removed the Sports section from Google News. Seems like my personalization have absolutely no influence over 90% of Google News. And why would Eurosport *UK* get most headlines of the Ile-de-France section?

Almost all the other stories have nothing to do with Île-de-France. They're all national current affairs and mention Paris as the place from which the journalist is reporting ("By Henry Samuel in Paris), or as a synonym for the government ("Qaeda Claims Paris to be in Negotiations to Free French Sahara Hostage").

I guess choosing the US Edition doesn't help Google select local news for Paris, but they could at least let me remove this non-sense.

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