If online story aggregator Google News has one limitation - other than a tendency to rile media mogul Rupert Murdoch - then it's the difficulty of helping users keep on top of the breaking news stories that interest them.
In recent times, the search giant has done much to make the Google News interface more customisable and to give users more control over the content. We've long been able to choose which news sections are displayed on the front page, and - more recently - we've been given the option to create our own, themed clusters of posts. For example, if you're interested in digital direct marketing, you can ask Google News to collect together breaking news stories that contain keywords like SEO, PPC, eCommerce, web analytics, email marketing and similar.
However, it can be rather laborious to create a fresh news section for every breaking topic that interests you. With that in mind, Google News now allows you to select a star next to any story that attracts your attention, and you can then check for updates in a dedicated area. Selecting a few of today's news stories, you can quickly end up with a resource that looks like this:
The most recent 20 starred topics are displayed in this section, and you are shown a selection of stories and images for each.
It's a simple idea - and one that takes its cue from a similar function in Google applications like Gmail - but it's an effective one.
So, give it a go. And if you'd like some advice on ways your content can get included in Google News, then please get in touch.
