Posted by While this functionality may have been around for a while, I just came across the ability to customize and personalize your Google News page. With a couple of simple clicks, drags and drops, you too can have your own online newspaper right on your screen.
If you thought newspapers and their online presences were going through hard times as of late, you should head over to Google News and personalize that page. Once you are logged into Google via any of your existing tools (Gmail, Google Reader, etc…), you will notice on the Google News page in the top right right corner, Edit this personalized page. From there you can move the predetermined and standard news sections (World news, Business, Sci/Tech, Entertainment, etc…) around into your own order of preference, but then you can add a whole bunch on content including:
– Local section. By adding in the name of the city, country or postal code, Google News will pull the news from that area.
– Custom section. Much like Google Alerts, you can select keywords and Google News will create a section based on your choices.
– Recommended Section. Based on what you have already chosen and the ranking of your content on the page, Google News will recommend other news items that might be of interest to you. This is very powerful in terms of serendipity and exposing you to news you might not have otherwise seen if you were only following information you have selected.
From the Google News Page, you can also subscribe via RSS, create more Google Alerts, look at a mobile version and more. You can even search through the news archive, do an advanced news search along with a Blog search.
It’s hard to imagine why anyone would not make a personalized Google News page one of their home tabs in their own web browser. Upon customizing my own Google News page, it reminded me of how much different Twitter was before Tweetdeck. Before, Google News was great, but it was like looking through a straw. Now, with Google News personalized pages, it’s like having the NORAD wall of screens at your fingertips.
If you’re using Google News personalized or use other similar tools or sites, please do share your experiences, tips, tricks and hacks.
Never another podcast episode or article 
Mitch
how is this any different from the personalized home pages that yahoo et al offer?
(without the recommendations)
Best custom newspaper award would go to google reader for me.
you can basically combine so many blogs and feeds from google news as well and from other news paper.
The only thing I consider when adding something is how much of the content will I see in the preview.. if it is just the title I wont add it.
I think the important thing to remember is that this is only for major news outlets. It in no way supplants Google Reader for me. Not in the least bit.
It’s more about having a dashboard to close to 30,000 news outlets that are also customized to my interests.
I prefer the look of netvibes – you can totally pimp it up! – add as many tabs as you want. It also has tons of widgets. In addition you can work it like a dash board and embed your life-streams. Peace.
All the bests will
I really depend on Google reader, and share your opinion that these options make Google News much more palatable. thanks for the tip!
Love it. Found it through your twitter posting but can’t make sense of the custom section. How to organize it so it delivers articles based on “any” keyword vs. “all”
I have been using iGoogle since that came out for my custom news page. It’s a whole lot cleaner than Yahoo and other such personalized pages… I have all my favorite news feeds (through RSS), bookmarks to my own stuff, weather, movies, and a few fun widgets. And you can move all the content boxes around and place them how you like. Hard to beat that!
With Google reader for all the blogs, I don’t need anything else!