Google News Showcase expands to help readers and publishers

If it feels hard to keep up with the news these days, you’re not alone. Our commitment to helping people find quality news is one of the reasons we launched Google News Showcase in October. This new online experience was announced as part of our $1 billion investment in news and is a way to contribute to the overall sustainability of our news partners around the world. 

Today, we’re announcing a number of new updates to News Showcase that will make it even more useful to news publishers and users alike. 

First, we’ll soon start offering people access to paywalled content in partnership with select news publishers. Paywalls are a crucial part of some publishers’ revenue strategies. To support that goal, we’ll pay participating partners to provide limited access to paywalled content for News Showcase users. In return, users will register with the news publisher, providing a way for the publisher to build a relationship with readers. 

It’s also now easier for people to find even more valuable content from the news organizations they trust; a new type of News Showcase panel includes a list of important articles selected daily by their favorite publishers. For example, if a user follows a news outlet that covers their local news, they will see daily updates on the most important local stories, selected by that newsroom. Relevant publications, both national and local, will also now be shown within the For You feed, plus in a dedicated area to discover new News Showcase publications within Newsstand on Google News. 

On top of these updates to improve News Showcase, we’re bringing quality news content to even more people. News Showcase has expanded to Google News on iOS and it will be coming to news.google.com and Discover soon. News Showcase metrics will soon appear in Search Console so publishers will have more data to better understand which articles and topics users are responding to. 

More publications signing on

Since first launching News Showcase two months ago, the number of publications from around the world which have signed on has nearly doubled.  There are now close to 400 news publications in countries such as Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, France, U.K. and Australia, and conversations are underway in a number of other countries. New partners include publications such as Le Monde, Courrier International, L’Obs, Le Figaro, Libération and L’Express in France, and Página12, La Gaceta and El Día in Argentina.

Our media partners in Germany and Brazil, the two countries currently live with News Showcase, have already seen strong reader engagement. “News Showcase is a very important project to amplify our digital presence,” says José Roberto de Toledo, Executive Editor of piauí, a national monthly magazine in Brazil. “On one side, it offers a new and important channel for more people to get to know the content that is produced by the magazine. On the other side, it gives us financial conditions to invest even more on content production, to amplify our offerings. All together, we hope to increase the relevance and influence of piauí.” 

News Showcase is also helping publishers reach new audiences. “News Showcase provides more opportunities for VRM’s market-leading regional news portals to provide our users with relevant news from their areas,” says Peter Neumann, Chief Digital Officer of VRM, a regional newspaper group in Germany. “The product has opened up new target groups for our journalism, reaching younger audiences who read our news offerings more frequently and actively than others. The easy discoverability and more attractive presentation of News Showcase panels helps a lot in this respect.”  

As 2020 comes to a close, it is heartening to witness the progress of News Showcase and the enthusiasm from both publishers and readers around the world. We will continue to engage and incorporate feedback as we build out features and grow the product to add to the future sustainability of our news partners.