A short abstract of each news story appears with its title as a clickable hyperlink. In addition to the story brief, links to additional related stories appear beneath the abstract. Usually, the first two are links to stories and other news sources carrying a related story.

View the full story by clicking either the title of the story or the small thumbnail image that appears with each story, as shown in Figure 14.1.

Figure 14.1. Click the title link or thumbnail to view the full story.

Select the country you want to view from the Top Stories drop-down list along the top of the Google News page. Selecting a new country displays headlines associated with the country you select. The world headlines often change with the country setting but may remain the same.

When selecting a new country, the language most associated with that country is used to display the Web page. In countries like India that have multiple languages but where English is the dominant language, news articles are displayed in English.

When using Internet Explorer, Google automatically senses the language your browser has set as the default language and shows you the news for that area of the world. Not only are the news articles displayed in the language you have set in your browser, Google displays different news articles that it believes will interest you based on the language you speak.

To change the language set in your Internet Explorer Web browser, follow these steps:

Google does not sense the Firefox browser language setting. You can refer to the Firefox help for more information about setting the default language settings. The steps are similar to Internet Explorer except you find the language settings among the Advanced option settings.

At the bottom of each Google News page is a list of the different international versions of Google News. You can select an international version by clicking the link associated with the name of the country, and news is displayed in the primary language of that country.

A Google Search text box appears at the top of the Google News page. This allows you to search through all the articles within Google News, past and present (sorry not the future yet) and whether the news article appears displayed in your Web browser or not.

There are a couple of browser settings that need to be correctly configured before you can configure and personalize Google News.

First, you must have JavaScript enabled in your Web browser. JavaScript is the scripting language that Google uses to allow editing of the configuration. The following sections provide instructions for enabling or making certain that JavaScript is already enabled in your Web browser. If you use a Web browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox refer to the Web browser Help for instructions on enabling JavaScript.

Enabling Cookies

It is important to have cookies enabled in your Web browser to make it possible to save the personalized Google News configuration. Cookies are small files associated with a Web site where configuration information can be saved. Enabling cookies creates information security concerns. When enabling cookies you will need to manage them. Simply erasing cookies causes you to lose your Google personalization. Using an adware and spyware checker regularly to control which cookies are saved and which are deleted is a good idea.

Figure 14.3. Change the way your Google News is displayed by personalizing the page.

Click and drag the various sections by the vertical bars on the right side of the button to reorder how they appear when you load Google News. As you drag the item to its new position, that area is highlighted. Releasing your mouse button after dragging the section to its new location repositions it. You can drag items up and down and between left and right columns. Once you arrange the sections to how you want them to appear you can further personalize each section.

At any time while customizing your Google News page, you may log in using your Google ID and save your configuration on the Google server, rather than only on your local computer. This enables you to view your customized version of Google News on any computer whenever you log in to Google on any computer.

Click on a section, such as World, in the Edit this personalized page box and you can select the edition you want to appear by choosing an edition from the drop-down list. You may also select the section by choosing from the second drop-down list. Further personalize the section by choosing how many stories you want to appear in that section. Finally, you can delete the section altogether.

You can save your configuration at any time by clicking Save layout. Once you save your configuration, a message displays letting you know that “You’ve created your own unique, personalized version of Google News on this computer.”

Add either additional standard, predefined sections to the Google News page or add your own custom section. Adding a standard section allows you to add back sections you might have previously deleted or create a new version of a section you have already chosen to display. The new standard section is created by first selecting the Edition; for example, if you are viewing the U.S. edition by default, perhaps you also want to see the world news from the United Kingdom. In this case you select U.K. from the edition and then select World from the Section drop-down list. You can also select how many stories you want to appear in that section.

When you finish adding a standard section, click Add section. Your Google News page now appears as you’ve customized it, and the Personalize this page link now reads Edit this personalized page. To make further changes at any time click the Edit this personalized page link.

You can further enhance your Google News viewing by creating a custom section and adding it to Google News. Begin adding a custom section by clicking the Add a custom section link. The simplest way to create a custom section is to type one or more keywords, select the number of stories, and click Add section. Be aware that all of the keywords you type must appear in the stories, so adding too many keywords may result in no—or very few—stories appearing in your custom section.

Create custom sections using the advanced features to further personalize each section. Click the Advanced link next to the Keywords text box. The Advanced selections appear (see Figure 14.4). In addition to adding keywords, you can also select in which news sections those keywords appear. For example, when typing a name as a keyword and wanting only to see news articles about sports figures with that name, you can select Sport from the Section drop-down list.

Figure 14.4. Create customized news sections.

The advanced features also allow you to select the language of your keywords. This limits stories to articles written in the language you select. Add a label for your new custom section by typing it in the Label: text box. If you do not type a label, Google creates a label based on the keywords you typed. You can then select the number of stories you want to appear or leave it at the default number of three. Click Add section to complete your configuration.

Click Save Layout if you have changed the layout of your sections. When you finish customizing your Google News page, click the Close link on the Edit personalized page box.

Each Google News article is displayed with the title, an abstract of the article, a list of the sources, and the time it was last updated. You can simplify browsing Google News by viewing only the headlines and eliminating the abstract of the article and the accompanying thumbnail. The headline of the article appears with the source of the news article and the time it was last updated. In the Edit this personalized page box click the Show headlines only link. To switch back to displaying the abstract and image click the Show images and text link.

On the Google News page (http://news.google.com), click the News Alerts link along the left side of the page. The link has a mail icon next to it. You can also access alerts directly by typing www.google.com/alerts into your Web browser. This launches the Google Alerts page shown in Figure 14.7. By filling in the form on this page you can create news alerts.

Figure 14.7. Create news alerts by filling in the form.

Submitting your request

The last step in configuring your request is to type the e-mail address where you want your Google Alerts delivered. Remember, if you type an e-mail address different from the one you use for your Google account you cannot use your Google account to manage these alerts. They will need to be managed by canceling the alert from the e-mail alert sent to you.

When you finish typing your e-mail address and configuring your Google Alert, click Create Alert. This sends the Alert request to Google, which then sends a verification request to the e-mail address you typed when creating the Alert.

Once you submit your request, a notification that your request has been accepted and that a verification e-mail has been sent to you. You are not finished, however. You must respond to the e-mail verification or you will not receive e-mail alerts on the topic you submitted. In the e-mail shown in Figure 14.8 you see two possible links: one to confirm and verify the alert and one to cancel. Assuming that you click the link to confirm, a new Web page appears letting you know that the Google Alert was verified. Of course, if you choose to cancel, a Web page that lets you know your alert was canceled appears.

Figure 14.8. Verify or cancel an alert by clicking the link sent to you in an e-mail.

You may find that you need to change how often you get alerts. Perhaps you are getting inundated with e-mail alerts and want to receive them daily instead of as it happens, or perhaps only in digest form weekly. Or perhaps you are not receiving alerts often enough and need to increase the frequency in which they are sent. Select the new frequency, and your alert is updated.

There are two ways to cancel an alert. The fastest and most direct way is to click the Cancel link in an alert sent to you by e-mail. This is easiest particularly if you have a large number of alerts. The other way to cancel an alert is to manage your alerts by logging in to Google and managing your alerts. When managing your alerts to cancel an alert click the Delete link next to the alert.