Google News adding “News Near You” feature for mobile

by David Silverberg

The English US version of Google News for smartphone is adding a new personalized feature: News Near You will list “news relevant to the city you’re in and surrounding areas,” a Google blog post states.

Using geo-location technology, Google can tell that you are in, say, Manhattan and when you visit Google News on your cellphone, it will aggregate the news relating to your area. Visit Toronto the next day and Google News will update in real-time stories relevant to the region.

The blog post explains how to enable News For You: “If this is the first time you are visiting Google News on your phone since this feature became available, a pop-up will ask you if you want to share your location. If you say yes, news relevant to your location will appear in a new section called ‘News near you’ which will be added at the bottom of the homepage. You can reorganize the sections later via the personalization page.”

There is no indication of when this feature will be rolled out to countries outside the US.

Google News is the leading player in the news aggregation landscape with 14.4 million unique visitors in April according to Comscore, TechCrunch reports.

Photo courtesy of Google