I’ve been a local news reader for a very long time, starting with my hometown paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Missouri. Admittedly, I started with the comics and word games like the junior jumble, but I came to appreciate the daily pulse of news about what was happening in my city. The Post-Dispatch was my connection to the city and to my neighbors.

In building Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news publishers, we want people who use Google’s news products to feel the same way about their local paper. Google News Showcase gives local publishers a way to show their editorial expertise and explain important issues to readers. In doing so, we hope readers are able to more deeply connect with their communities.

Today, we’re doing more to make it easier to find local publishers in Google News Showcase by bringing their panels into the local section of Google News. News Showcase publishers hand pick the content for these local panels, enabling them to highlight the most important stories of the day in their area and giving them another powerful way to deepen their relationship with readers. To get to the Local section on Google News, simply tap the Local section on the left of news.google.com or navigate to your local section of the For You feed in the Google News app.

More than 90% of the publications that are part of News Showcase represent local or community news. They include Citynews in Italy, La Capital in Argentina, Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany, Jornal do Commercio in Brazil, El Colombiano in Colombia, Guelph Mercury Tribune in Canada, the ​​Anandabazar Patrika in India, and Iliffe Media in the United Kingdom. We’ve been working closely with these publishers since before the launch of News Showcase to make sure the product works well for them.

Outside of today’s news, we’re always making additional changes behind the scenes to help publishers improve their experience with News Showcase. Notably, we recently launched the ability for publishers to see how readers are engaging with their News Showcase content in real time, so they can better understand what people want to read. This gives publishers the ability to respond quickly to what's trending, add more context to their stories or add related panels to stories that are getting traction. We’ve also introduced the ability to edit the images that appear in panels directly in our publication tool, giving News Showcase editors more control and saving them time.

Since we launched News Showcase in October 2020, we’ve signed deals with more than 1,200 news publications around the world, ensuring millions of people are able to find, engage and support the news organizations that cover issues that matter to them. We’ve also launched in more than a dozen countries including India, Japan, Portugal, Germany, Brazil, Austria, the U.K., Australia, Czechia, Italy, Colombia, Argentina, Canada and Ireland. Today, we’re rolling out the product in Poland.

News Showcase is just one way we’re helping readers find news that matters to them. We recently added a new news feature in Google Search where readers see a carousel of local news stories when we’re able to find local news coverage related to their search. This helps readers find important local news around their searches and helps local news publishers reach people looking for their news. This carousel is available globally in all languages.

We also improved our ranking systems so authoritative, relevant local news sources appear more often alongside national publications in our features such as Top Stories. This ensures people will be able to find coverage from authoritative local news sources, helping them see how national stories can impact them locally.

Supporting local publishers is also a key focus of our work and that of the Google News Initiative (GNI), our effort to help news organizations and journalists thrive in a digital age. For example, the GNI Digital Growth Program is a free program aimed at helping small and mid-sized news publishers around the world develop the capabilities required to accelerate the growth of their businesses online. And the GoogleNews Lab offers partnerships and training in over 50 countries. We’ve also built our products to help journalists with different technical abilities and resources. One example is Pinpoint, a tool that uses the best of our Search, AI, and machine learning technology to help reporters quickly go through thousands of documents like forms, handwritten notes, images, e-mail archives, PDFs, and automatically transcribes audio files.

We’re dedicated to playing our part to help support local journalism thriving in a digital age — and to helping readers discover the local news stories and understand the issues that affect them.

Last year we announced the launch of Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program that pays publishers for bringing their voice and curation into Google’s news products. Backed by a $1 billion investment, we’ve so far launched the product in the U.K., Australia, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Czechia and India. Ninety percent of the publishers signed up for News Showcase in more than a dozen countries represent local, regional or community newspapers. 

Since we launched, we’ve also released new features like Extended Access, which gives News Showcase readers more opportunities to read select paid content from our publisher partners to show them the value of high-quality news.

Today, we’re announcing a few new features for News Showcase. First, we’re rolling out News Showcase for desktop users of Google News (via news.google.com/showcase). Now every user of Google News, regardless of what device they’re using, can see enhanced story panels from our News Showcase partners. This feature is available in the eight countries where we’ve currently launched News Showcase. 

Here’s how readers and publishers will see News Showcase panels working on desktop:

Most people will see News Showcase panels right on their Top Stories page, the first page they land on in Google News. Here, right below the top stories of the day, we’ve added a new carousel containing the latest News Showcase panels from publishers they already follow, as well from publishers they might be interested in.

For users who want to explore, we’ve added the News Showcase catalog page, accessible directly via the left-side navigation. Here, users can see the latest panels from every participating publisher in their country: both national titles covering issues across the country and throughout the world, and smaller regional and local outlets covering the events closer to the places readers may live and care about.

And for users who want to dive deeper, we’ve added a new News Showcase section directly on participating publishers’ landing pages — their homepage within Google News. Here, readers can see all their News Showcase panels: the latest Rundown panel, covering the most important issues for a publisher every day, and their story panels, which give readers deeper context on important articles.

These desktop experiences will happen seamlessly, and will appear to users without requiring any additional work from our publisher partners. 

"Google News Showcase is a valuable resource for publishers like La Voz de San Justo. It allows our editors to select relevant content for our audience in an easy, effective and intuitive way. It's a product with multiple benefits,” says Constanza Martínez, a content manager from La Voz de San Justo, a local publisher in Argentina. “Our editors can update the panels in a heartbeat to keep our audience informed, and after that they are able to get on with other work in the workflow of the newsroom. With Google News Showcase we present premium content to readers in a seamless way, even for a local publisher like us." 

We’re also rolling out a new feature within News Showcase panels today. Publishers will be better able to add context around their stories via linked bullet points in their panels. You’ll start to see these new links appear on News Showcase on mobile over the next few weeks.

The goal of News Showcase panels is to help users find new publishers and build strong relationships with them, so they can always find the latest news from a publication they trust. While that is a longer-term goal, we've been encouraged by what we're seeing as we have continued to expand and improve News Showcase. Millions of users are seeing News Showcase panels every day, getting a better understanding of stories right within their news feeds. They’re also clicking through to read the full article on the publisher’s site; we’re now delivering over 10 million clicks per month from News Showcase content.

People continue to tell us they want more from their favorite publishers. Users have tapped the Follow button more than 460,000 times on News Showcase panels (almost double what they were just a few months ago), ensuring they get to see regular updates from their favorite publishers every time they open Google News. We’ll work with publishers to learn more about how people engage with News Showcase to be sure we’re delivering on our long-term goal of strengthening the relationship between readers and publishers.

News Showcase is just one part of Google’s overall commitment to the news industry. We partner with news publishers through the Google News Initiative, offer innovative products like Subscribe with Google to help them earn sustainable revenue, and build tools like those inJournalist Studio to help make it simpler and more affordable to uncover and write stories. High-quality journalism is important to us, to our users and to society as a whole, and we’re dedicated to ensuring a positive future with our products and investments.

For the past two decades, we’ve worked closely and collaboratively with the news industry on helping publishers evolve in the digital age. One of the major ways we support journalism is through Google News Showcase, our new product and licensing program that pays news publishers to curate content across Google News and Discover, fueled by our recent $1 billion investment in news. News Showcase also benefits readers by helping them understand complex stories and find the news organizations covering the issues, both locally and nationally, that matter most to them. 

In the past six months, we’ve launched News Showcase in the U.K., Australia, Argentina, Brazil and Germany and signed deals with close to 600 publishers in over a dozen countries; over 90% of the publishers are considered local, regional or community newspapers. Today, we started rolling out News Showcase to users in Italy. 

Now that publishers have been able to use News Showcase for a few months, we wanted to give an update on how it is working for the news organizations currently live on the product. 

First, we’re thrilled by the amount of quality content our publisher partners are providing to readers through News Showcase. News organizations from the Evening Standard and The Financial Times in the U.K. to The Canberra Times, The Illawarra Mercury and The Saturday Paper in Australia, to Infobae, Página12, and El Día in Argentina, Der Spiegel, Stern and Die Zeit in Germany and Folha de S.Paulo and A Crítica in Brazil are producing more than 7,000 panels per week, ensuring there is a wide variety of timely, in-depth stories for readers. 

Many of the panels that are currently being created are aimed at helping to inform users at the start or end their day, a choice that publishers are able to make thanks to the flexibility of the product. This variety and flexibility ensures publishers have control over their voice, storytelling and ability to reach readers, a choice that publishers make on their own sites that they can now do inside Google products with News Showcase. In an era of fast-paced news, News Showcase publishers are helping readers by highlighting the news they may have missed and getting them up to speed on the day’s events. 

In Google News, readers can follow a publisher when they want to see more content from them. When that happens, it tells us the product is working: The reader found a publisher they liked enough to want to hear more from every day. Since we launched, users have followed news publishers more than 200,000 times thanks to the features we launched alongside News Showcase. This is a huge increase, and we’re looking forward to seeing these new relationships develop.

We’re constantly looking to improve News Showcase’s contribution to a sustainable news ecosystem, and these early signs are encouraging. Our first news partners recently launched our extended access feature, which pays participating publishers to allow readers to access some of their paywalled content provided through News Showcase. This preview of publishers’ premium content can help users realize the value of being a paying subscriber, and we’re looking forward to users growing and strengthening their relationship with publishers as a result of this new feature. 

"The experience of working together with Google has been surprisingly fluid and enriching,” says Daniel Dessein, President of La Gaceta, a regional newspaper that covers the province of Tucuma in Argentina. “The process of setting up News Showcase was much more agile than we originally thought and we received support from high-level developers who gave us valuable insight and learnings for La Gaceta. Extended access has opened up new, exciting ways for audiences to connect with our content.”

People who deeply understand the value of their favorite publishers’ journalism are much more likely to subscribe, and it’s these users who do the most to help support the creation of great journalism. News Showcase is already delivering value for both users and publishers and we will continue to actively partner and solicit feedback to build on this effort.  

News Showcase is just one of the numerous ways we work with news publishers to help them grow their business, their audience and their skills.  Examples include Subscribe with Google, a product built for and with news publishers to make it easier to turn readers into loyal subscribers, as well as the Google News Initiative, where we provide a wide range of tools, training and grant funding.  Over the years we’ve provided billions of dollars to support quality journalism and remain invested in contributing to a sustainable future for the news industry. 

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.