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Google has finally rolled out its Full Coverage news feature in search results, two years later than anticipated.
First introduced to Google News back in 2018, the Full Coverage feature provides users with more context regarding news stories from multiple sources. After the initial launch in 2018, Google said a wider rollout would take place the following year, but that never materialized.
Two years later, the Full Coverage feature is now finally available in regular search results.
You might be wondering, what exactly does this mean? Let’s take a deeper look at what exactly is the Full Coverage feature.
What is Full Coverage?
Google uses artificial intelligence to connect different news articles that are related to each other in real time. This allows users to follow a particular news story in real-time from different sources, and gives a better look at how that story is being reported by each source over time.
“With this launch, we’re introducing new technology that is able to detect long-running news stories that span many days, like the Super Bowl, to many weeks or months like the COVID-19 pandemic, ” said Google News Product Manager, Itamar Snir, in a recent blog post. “We then organize the Full Coverage page to help people easily find top news along with additional content like explainers and local coverage that are helpful to understanding these complex stories.”
Unfortunately, there’s no way to optimize your news articles to trigger Full Coverage, other than the steps you would normally take when publishing articles.
The results included in the Full Coverage section are also not personalized to a particular user, and everyone searching for that story will see the same coverage in search results.
How Do Users See Full Coverage?
The Full Coverage feature is not available for every news story. It is mainly used for high-profile news stories that develop over time and require ongoing coverage, like the COVID-19 pandemic, a natural disaster, or mass shooting.
In order to access Full Coverage articles, users searching for information on a particular news story will see a “View Full Coverage” button after scrolling to the end of the Top Stories carousel.
Users can also find the Full Coverage button by clicking on “More news on…” below the Top Stories carousel.
Full Coverage in Search was made available on mobile devices on March 8 for English-language searches made in the U.S. only. It will be rolled out in other languages and countries over the next few months.
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