The redesign of Google News was as surprising as it was radical. The new surface has been significantly streamlined. The central element of the new site are the so-called "Story Cards". They are more or less limited to just three elements: title, medium and publication date. Google also removed the short teaser texts, also known as "snippets", from the concept.
Yes: Even if Google certainly meant well with its modernization path. In many places, the layout looks half-baked. But the hit rate is also catastrophic, which is so thin board boring that it would be half badly phrased in a friendly way.
Looking for the cause of Google's radical change
What made the internet giant take such a radical step? Because the fact is: The new Google News unfortunately represents an obviously colossal step backwards in terms of quality. Google is miles away from its original goal of being a broad-based news aggregator serving a wide range of media, but also specialist blog portals Forum and the user thus offers a good source of information.
Google's own blog post, which was published at the same time as the relaunch of the site, provides information on the new Google News. In it, the US group does not fully address the changes in Google News, but in places.
Regarding the fact that in future only the headline will be visible instead of an anteaser, Google claims that this was introduced for reasons of readability. The new card format should make it easier to search for articles and check their relevance. Aha! Only: Of course, it is of more benefit to the reader if, in addition to the headline, he gets at least two or three lines of further background information about the article displayed in Google.
The Internet giant also took over the navigation bar. This is to the left of the main area. Messages can now be filtered according to specific areas of interest. By default, the subject areas of business, knowledge, sports, entertainment, as well as national and international reports are preset.
The selection can be expanded as you wish. Anyone who likes to google "NASA" or "Apple" can easily create their own news area. However, the Internet giant requires a Gmail account for this function. Data snooping not excluded! And: With this, Google is taking a step towards a closed Internet. It's kind of an awkward reading barrier. Do you want that? No!
Top headlines are now called "Story Cards" on Google
Probably the most striking feature of the new Google News are the so-called "Story Cards". They replace the old search results and contain the title of the report, a photo and, if applicable, a video. In general, Google seems to want to give more space to moving images. The Internet giant writes on its blog that news videos are becoming increasingly important and that the search algorithm for them has therefore been improved.
When selecting the individual reports or "story cards", the US giant wants to ensure that the view from different perspectives is as balanced as possible, according to Google's big promise. The frequently used tags such as "frequently quoted", "local source" or "live update" are intended to increase the trustworthiness of the "Story Cards". The "Fact Check" box, on the other hand, is reserved for US users only. All reports that carry Google's fact check label are collected under this. This includes all search results that have been checked for accuracy by one of the 115 organizations cooperating with Google, such as PolitiFact and Snopes.
Google News search with massive weaknesses
But how exactly does the new interface perform in practice? After all, the US group has always made user-friendliness a priority. Netz-trends.de is interested in one thing above all: How high is the quality of Google's news machine? (All of the following information is only valid for a short test in the Google News desktop version in the incognito mode of the browser).
Several sample samples from the business, politics and sports sub-areas served as a basis on Friday, July 7, 2017. The first test was carried out using the keyword billiger.de, a large German price comparison website. After entering the keyword, the new Google News lists a colorful smorgasbord of "Story Cards". The ranking of the individual reports seems to have been chosen somewhat arbitrarily.
The message "Billiger.de: Grippostad as top deal" is displayed as the first entry. The message comes from the pharmaceutical news blog Apotheke Adhoc. Since this is the latest news article on billiger.de, such a journalistic approach makes sense.
The second message played out by Google News about billiger.de seems to be much more problematic. Title of the article at finanznachrichten.de: "The view of the Raiffeisen chief economist: power of the future". A connection between the search query "billiger.de" and the Raiffeisen bank is not immediately apparent to the reader. Where you could previously briefly sketch the article thanks to snippets, you now have to laboriously click and read each article individually. A real weakness in the new Google News.
Another major shortcoming: Google also shows an alarmingly long list of irrelevant reports under the keyword billiger.de. In particular, numerous T-Online news articles carry weight here, which the price comparison portal billiger.de does not even address. The reason for this is quickly found. Since billiger.de is shown as a partner network on the T-Online site, Google seems to include this link in the results. Here, the US company still urgently needs to work on the search algorithm.
The new Google News also seems to have a very poor memory. According to our observation, only messages that are no more than two weeks old are displayed. But that's not all: the number of articles also seems to have been significantly chopped up by the Google News censor.
We were able to find a maximum of 20 articles with the search term "Putin" or "G20 protests" on July 7, 2017 - all from the current day and even only up to hours (in the case of "Putin") and 20 hours (in the case of "G20 Protest") back. Articles that are more than two hours old are now completely shredded by Google for the user. Catastrophic!
Apparently Google doesn't care about a historical news view or even just one from the day before. The value for the user thus drops dramatically towards zero. An objective picture is thus impossible. If you want to read older news on a specific topic, you have to switch to the Google archive. If you can find it at all - which was not the case in most of the cases we tested.
Example: If you search for the keyword "Unister" in the new Google News in our short test run on Friday, July 7, 2017, you will only find a ridiculous two articles out of what were once thousands! In addition, quite irrelevant texts appear.
One is a general one around the travel market ("Margins Are Dirty in the Travel Market" by Internet World 06/28/2017). The other article on the German Internet company is also the main hit, an English-language text from Skift (a portal that is irrelevant in Germany) and reads "Lastminute.com Group CEO: We Consider Ourselves a Media Company" (also from June 28, 2017 ).
No match for the hundreds of articles on the dramatic plane crash by Unister founder Thomas Wagner a year ago. No hit on the court case, where a fraudster who lured Wagner into a financial trap and relieved him of 1.5 million euros was sentenced to four years in prison. Google News doesn't even offer news hits on legal proceedings against three Unister managers that have been going on for months.
The previous version of the news aggregator was much more powerful here. The normal news display via the Google search bar is also much more convenient and covers a longer period of time.
The news aggregator provides more useful hits under the keyword "1. FC Bayern Munich". Arranged by publication date, the user will find numerous reports on player transfers, coaches and soccer results. Reports from regional media such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung or TZ are tagged "Local Source". The new Google News also summarizes thematically identical articles in a story card.
Established media rank highest in Google News
An exclusive, short sample survey by the news portal netz-trends.de on July 7, 2017 also showed that the Google News search algorithm particularly favors the large media , even if they only play dpa reports or reuter reports almost exactly the same way or otherwise do not always offer the user real added value.
50% of all 75 front page articles in an international edition of Google News, in "Google News USA", went to just 17 media back. In doing so, we did not take into account possible additional articles that only appear to the consumer after actively clicking on submenus.
Among the dominant 17 media outlets on Google News USA, which shared 50% of the articles featured on Google News USA on the homepage, were almost exclusively US-based media outlets, some of whom had been there for decades in almost all cases opinions and information dominate in the USA. At the time of our sample these were:
Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, New York Times, BBC, Bloomberg, Hollywood Reporter, The Hill, Twitter, U.S. News & World Report, ABC News, Bleacher Report, CBSSports.com, Chron.com, Daily Mail and Endo Pharmaceuticals.
The remaining 50% of the reports displayed by Google News USA were from twice as many media – namely 38. Here, too, we could almost only find old media classics. Among them were at least international ones with a broad political spectrum, which increased the usefulness of Google News somewhat:
ESA, PolitiFact, Fox Business, From Australia The Australian, From China Xinhua, From India Firstpost, From Russia The Moscow Times, GoFundMe, Haaretz, Halo Waypoint, HNew York Post, Los Angeles Times, Marvel.com , Miami Herald, New York Daily News, Newsweek, Newsy, Opinion Los Angeles Times, RED camera, Reddit, Science Advances, Scientific American, Smartphone business news, Telegraph.co.uk, The Verge, The Verge, The Weather Channel, TIME , TMZ.com, United Kingdom Daily Star, University of Edinburgh, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, WANE, World Health Organization, WPXI Pittsburgh, YouTube and ZDNet.
In our short sample, Google News USA displayed the following media most frequently to users on the start page of the Google News USA news homepage, which means: These collect the bulk of the hundreds of thousands of user clicks and thus the sales through advertising impressions
Washington Post (5 articles in Google News USA on the front page), CNN (4 articles in Google News USA on the front page), Fox News (4 articles), New York Times (4 articles), BBC ( 2 articles), Bloomberg (2 articles), Hollywood Reporter (2), The Hill (2), Twitter (2) and U.S. News & World Report (2).
All other media only featured a headline in Google News at the time of the sample in Google News USA.
Google News cements the monopoly position of the largest German media companies
An even more bleak picture in terms of pluralism of opinion emerges for the start page of Google News Germany (belongs to Google Germany GmbH). At the time of the survey on July 7, 2017 at 4:10 p.m., 64% of all 47 home page articles in Google News go back to just 8 media. Articles that were only displayed after clicking on the submenus were expressly not taken into account.
The top 8 top dogs include the established German media, which influenced public opinion long before the internet revolution. At the time of the survey, Focus Online was in the lead with a total of 8 articles, followed by Welt Online (6 articles), Spiegel Online (4 articles), Bild.de (4 articles) and mit 2 articles each for NDR.de, Stern.de, Sueddeutsche.de and Zeit Online.
Especially with regard to Focus Online and Welt.de, this means: At the time of our sample, not even US classics such as Washington Post, CNN or New York Times are on the homepage of Google News USA as often as these media Google News has been displayed (note table). Looking at focus-online (Hubert Burda Media), we can say:
Im compared to the tested "Google News USA" homepage, the portal is displayed two to almost three times as often as the other media on the "Google News Germany" homepage as a percentage largest media in the USA in "Google News USA".
Such a preference is ultimately extremely strange. In two tests, around 17% of the articles on the Google News Germany homepage were all about focus-online (note the tables).
The other 36% were spread over a total of 16 different media. In addition to well-known brands such as t-online.de, n-tv.de and RTL Online, some blogs such as golem.de and heise.de were among the search results. In addition, Google also included some special interest sites such as finanzen.net, chip.de, heilpraxis.net and playstation.com on the Google News homepage.
But one thing is also certain: news from politics and business is determined by the top dogs. According to the study, the all-round view of a topic that is widely promoted by Google falls by the wayside. Analogous to Google News USA, the same applies to Germany: the entire Google traffic is spread over just a few media. The near monopoly position of individual media companies on the Google News homepage is even more dramatic than in the United States of America. While 50 percent of the articles there go back to 17 media, in Germany 64% of all articles at the time of the Google News start page test came from just 8 houses.
A renewed investigation carried out by netz-trends.de on July 10 at 11:25 a.m. also gives little hope. Here, too, almost the same news sources dominated as on Friday. Focus Online is once again at the forefront with 8 articles. Spiegel Online is listed by Google News Germany with 5 articles, the pages of Zeit Online, Sueddeutsche.de with 3 articles each. Welt Online is present with two articles.
If you take the news portals from last Friday as a new basis for calculating the distribution, then around 53 percent of the reports displayed on the home page of Google News Germany come from the eight major news houses Focus, Spiegel, Zeit, Süddeutsche, Welt , Bild, Stern and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. NDR was not included in the second survey.
The remaining 47% on the Google News Germany homepage is based on reports from 18 different editorial offices. For the most part, however, the US group also lists the blogs and news portals that were already surveyed in the first study, such as heilpraxis.net, golem.de, playstation.com and chip.de.
And that, where Google News Germany alone has included a total of over 700 news sources as information media and, according to its own statements, also evaluates them for relevant content.
On the other hand, it is exemplary that Google News is increasingly resorting to foreign specialist media when it comes to foreign policy issues. Mention should be made here of the portals euronews.de, ostexperte.de or the Austrian news sources such as kurier.at. News with nationwide relevance, but which was researched at the location of the event, is marked by Google with the label "local source".
So the bottom line for Google News is: The big ones get all the Google traffic on News and thus all the sales. Independent blogs, including smaller ones, are finding it increasingly difficult in Google. The Internet is thus being increasingly monopolized in the field of news as well. The Internet should represent a broader democratic basis, where many people of all kinds have their say - not always the same top dogs who already share the talk show rounds on ARD, ZDF or BBC.
In the end, Google only promotes the big ones again. Exactly what Google vowed not to do when it was founded in 1998. For the user, this is also no added value, but a huge step backwards. Instead of a variety of blogs and media, more and more uniformity. That was also a lot better three or four years ago.
Search engine optimization reduces journalistic quality
In addition, those listed are often those who may have invested hundreds of millions of euros in SEO and other search techniques: We estimate that welt.de, for example, might be one of them, along with a few others suspects.
These portals have been driving their search engine optimization (SEO) to the extreme for years, in which some texts are simply given a different headline, slightly rewritten, and then to land at the top of Google News again with almost exactly the same editorial content and to drive out the portals or blogs that cannot afford it financially.
But this is not an added value for the user, but in the end he is being fooled with such SEO measures and Google is downright fooled. Independent internet magazines and news blogs or opinion blogs are losing more and more ground and opportunities.
Google News is not (yet) convincing
Compulsory registration, missing snippets, poor information, illogical news selection, too little media variety in the hits on the Google News homepage: the list of criticisms of the new Google News is long long and Google should and could have done more with its relaunch of Google News than just making it cosmetically modern.
That means: The few advantages of the new Google News, such as the new "story cards" or tags (which seem almost old-fashioned again), do not outweigh the numerous disadvantages.
Another major disadvantage is that setting up individual message areas and archive access is only possible with registration with the Google service Gmail.
Update from July 11, 2017:
Another major point of criticism: Google News Germany is misleading when the button on the start page below the first one or two articles states "All Article" can be clicked. But the fact is: Google News doesn't list "all" articles actually indexed in Google News on the topic, but again only a very small selection. According to which criteria this selection is made is anyone's guess, but in case of doubt Google doesn't even really know for sure.
In any case, the quality of the texts cannot be the criterion, since often only articles from daily newspaper publishers appear in their online presence, which in turn often tend to have double content due to agency reports. Current example: The report that more and more Hartz IV are long-term unemployed. Numerous media that are basically indexed in Google News have written about it here, but under "All articles" there is only a small excerpt.
For example, the article "More and more long-term unemployed with Hartz IV" from the blog steuerratschlag.eu is missing in the keyword search "Hartz IV unemployed".
The same applies to the keyword "Unister": In this netz-trends.de text on the vulnerabilities of the new Google News, we also had this large East German Internet company that went bankrupt after death of its founder Thomas Wagner. While our article is listed under the keyword "Unister" in the old Google News Germany, it is completely ignored in the new Google News Germany (or Google News Germany). Quality is also very different here.
