Google takes on Facebook in latest planned news feed update

Google is making plans to add a new newsfeed to its website and app, which will show personalised news on your Google homepage before you carry out your search. This is in a bid to out do Facebook, their biggest rival in this personalised news space to date.

Where will this Google news feed be hosted?

Google has announced that they’ll be adding a new news feed to their homepage, i.e. Google.com and the Google app, which will allow personalised news stories to appear. Users won’t have to conduct any search in order for these news stories to pop up in the first place, as it will be tailored content to the individual user.

How will your news be personalised to you?

Users will be able to follow particular topics of interest, which will help to populate their personalised news feed. With rivals such as Facebook coming into the news industry, it’s important Google stays up to date with the general publics needs and how they are starting to change in the ways they consume and access news and information. So it really is in Google’s best interests to make search as useful as possible.

However, one thing Google is keen to avoid is not showing different opinions on the topic, so you’ll be able to follow interests, which will then be reported on by a variety of publishers to keep the information as diverse as possible on perspectives and viewpoints.

What types of content can be hosted in this new feed?

The brilliant thing is most content formats will be supported in the feed from videos, news stories, music to other features.

Will this impact paid media advertisements?

At this stage, it isn’t clear if any sponsored posts will be enabled in this feed. Google’s focus currently is on ensuring people aren’t going elsewhere for information, so for us paid media advertisers – we’ll just have to wait and see, keeping a close eye on the latest developments as they roll out.

What does this mean for search marketing?

We all know user experience is key in today’s search landscape and accessing information quickly and easily is a top priority to deliver to users for content publishers.

So for search marketing specialists like us here at iThinkMedia the new challenge may be how we adapt our practices to optimising for the Google news feed through a mix of SEO, content and digital PR best practices to garner results for our clients.

What are your thoughts on this proposed Google personalised news feed roll out? Comment below or tweet us @Honcho_Search.