Google News is headed into your neighborhood with a new local feature that show the day's top stories for your immediate area, based on address, city or zip code. Google may be a bit late to the local news game, but the results are far superior to other sources.
To see the latest happenings in your area just head over to the Google News homepage and scroll down to the Local News section. Enter your location and you’ll see the results added to your page.
If it’s RSS results you’re after just head up to the sidebar and click your new local news entry and then click the RSS or Atom links and you’ll have a feed for your local news.
Given that there are plenty of other local news options out there, how does Google’s new offering stack up? In my experience, it blows the others away. I live in a small town outside of Atlanta and when I look for local news on most sites — like Yahoo for instance — I end up with maybe two stories from the local paper and the rest of the stories are about events in Atlanta, which is over an hour from my house — not what I would call local.
Google’s new feature on the other hand is entirely about the city I live in, pulling from the local papers, a couple of online news sites and even the local university’s student paper, which I have never seen show up in any other local news search.
In short, very impressive compared to the competition. Of course those in major metropolitan areas may find the results less compelling given that other sources are likely much better to begin with.
By Scott Gilbertson
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