It seems that there is now a local news section and a little change of design (the recommended news are now a section as a whole, not embedded in the top stories any more).

In the other hand, I've lost all my personal previous topics (based on keyword). But the new Google Docs form feature can excuse that! :)

It seems that all my personalization has been canceled (number of articles by section, place of sections, etc.).

And there is now some iteration, with the same news (same image, same main article, same video, comments and related sources) in top stories and recommended. Though, I do read and like some specific topic (such as Google).

What if Google has deleted all my news history?

In Germany it doesn't work very fine.

I don't see how to access the option (and the Google News Blog doesn't explain either); can anyone tell me?

Wow, there's also a "Recommended for You" option, where Google looks into your search history and assembles related news stories.

photoactive:

1. go to "Personlized News", the first choice in the drop-down next to to "Go" button
2. Go to "Edit this personalized page" (takes a second to appear on top-right)
3. Choose "Add a local section"

although it looks like it's geared to USA locations, it works for any international location if you type it in full, Google Maps style (e.g. "barnet, london, u.k.")

Not same, but related topic: Anybody here subscribing to Google News Alerts using Google Reader? How do you filter out the DELUGE of duplicate feed items? I'm trying to route it through Yahoo Pipes' unique operator. But that doesn't work very well either. I am getting very tired of the duplicates – it kills the usability of News Alerts!

This doesn't work very well (example with "Lille, France", half of the results aren't related with Lille)
Then, it works only with those parameters :
topic=pe&hl=en&gl=us&ned=us
without that it doesn't work

Thanks, Motti.. That makes sense, though I don't get that option in "edit this personalized page". I guess it's because I'm in the UK and get a UK customised news page; I can get the US news homepage but whenever I click on the personalized view it goes back to the UK version (with no localisation option).

Oh, I found out one way to do it: I deleted my current personalisations; then the option came up. Now I just have to put the old ones back..

I personaly have found all my personalisations removed but the local feature activated. But I would have like the reverse way: keep my work and let me manage to get the additional feature. Don't you think it should be the basic way to release improvements?

Libran Lover, do you use Bloglines or Google Reader? I had this problem in ~2006 when I was using Bloglines, but it got much better when I switched to Reader. If you see it happening with Reader, would you mind giving me an example search query that demonstrates the problem?

Matt,

I am using Google Reader. I find duplicates on pretty much all my News Alerts queries. Following are a few examples of what I am getting alerted on:
1. Google mobile.
2. Gphone.
3. Open Handset Alliance.
4. Android.
5. Google VoIP.

Some of the duplicates appear several times over a period of 3-4 days. I am suspecting that each time something changes on the source web page (Eg: a reader comments on the story), Google News Alert sends it to my Reader.

I used to have News Alerts sent to me as email before, once a day. I never got duplicates then. I switched to getting the Alerts as an RSS feed and I've gotten buried!

Thanks, Libran Lover. When I was playing with it a while ago, it seemed to be related to when a news story went from a single story to part of a cluster of stories. I'll see if I can recreate the dupes on my end.

Thanks, Matt. I hope you are able to resolve this one.

I added your searches to my Google Reader, saw the problem still happening, and sent a screenshot to the News team. I'll keep my fingers crossed. :)