Google announced some design enhancements this week to make Google News (desktop) a much more sticky, engaging user experience. There’s definitely more of a Yahoo News feel about it and there are 3 immediate areas of focus: personalisation, customised topics and local news.
Google News: personalisation
Similar to the Google News app & Google app, personalisation of results is a key area. Personalisation drives huge engagement levels in terms of downstream web traffic via a channel like Google Discover; Google knows that this is the way to drive value in their all important content channel.
Google News: Customised Topics
By driving a more immersive experience for signed in users, when users navigate back to Google News, their customised topics and local news will be above the fold.
Google News: local news
Earlier in 2022, Google announced local news changes with ‘News Showcase‘. As you will see when trying out the new design, ‘News showcase’ has it’s own area and promotes local media with its latest/most popular articles gathered together.
This latest update sees greater visibility for locally relevant news which could well have positive ramifications for regional news websites.
Summary
The more ‘online newspaper’ feel of Google News is quite a departure from the more traditional looking SERP, showing a greater intent to push the product development of this Google product.