Google goes local in UK

Google Suggest and Google Local News land in GB

1 April 2009 6:59 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Google has turned its eye to becoming more relevant to UK searchers by announcing two new search features for the UK on Tuesday.

From today users will get a local flavour to Google's suggest feature and the ability to check out local news within its news service.

Although both features are already available in the US, the new features will go live in the UK, India, Ireland or Australia. Google Suggest will give you real time suggestions after typing a few letters.

Google says that users in the UK who type "liver" will now get suggestions for Liverpool rather than liver diseases as they would in the US.

Interestingly suggesting that the Irish have nothing better to do than drink, Google's Google Suggest Ireland example is pubs with the new local feature bringing up pubs in Dublin as the lead suggestion.

The company says the new rollout means the Google Suggest feature now covers 155 domains in 51 languages.

Probably further spelling the end to the local newspaper industry, local news has come to Google News for users in the UK, India, and Canada as well.

"Local news sections let you keep track of current events in your area. We analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located", the American company states in a blog post.

The top stories for a given area will be at the top of your results, and our rankings also take into account a publication's location to promote local sources for each story.

Full tags

Software, Online, Google