Google is putting high-quality content front and centre in search with a ‘News Showcase’ format that will include interactive story panels and more in-depth coverage.
Google said that the new feature, which is set to roll out in the coming weeks, will enable readers to gain a better understanding of important stories.
It will do this by providing a visual timeline of events, listing key bullet points, and providing links to related articles.
Publishers that are surfaced in the News Showcase will also gain more exposure across Google products, including in the news section and general search.
To ensure that the new format has authoritative content from the outset, Google has partnered with 200 publishers.
The publishers will be able to craft their own editorials and decide how news is presented.
Google said that providing readers with more context will drive higher levels of traffic to webpages and publisher sites.
“These panels give participating publishers the ability to package the stories that appear within Google’s news products, providing deeper storytelling and more context through features such as timelines, bullets and related articles,” Google said in a statement.
Google is also planning to bring video, audio and daily briefings to the News Showcase after it launches.
The new format is part of Google’s $1bn investment in news content and “award-winning” publishers around the world as it looks to build a more sustainable environment for storytelling.
Google said that a number of leading publications in the UK have already signed up.
The new format will be added to Google News on Android and iOS first, before arriving on Search and Discover in the near future.
In other news, Google said that webmasters may have had problems with mobile indexing and syndicated content last week after search was affected by two outages.
Google added that it was working to resolve the issue that was leading to some URLs vanishing from the index.
