Google Ads in Google News

Google has introduced ads to the results of search queries on Google News aimed at turning the news aggregation site into a money-making venture. This means that when one a query is entered into the Google News search box, one will see text ads alongside your News search results. These ads would only currently appear on Google News search-results pages in the United States.

Josh Cohen, a business project manager at Google, announced the change on Wednesday. "In recent months we've been experimenting with a variety of different formats. We've always said that we'd unveil these changes when we could offer a good experience for our users, publishers and advertisers alike," Cohen said.

Google News aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources around the world and provides links to articles on their websites. These articles are selected by computers that evaluate how often and on what sites a story appears online.

"I presume that Google gets paid per click for action on those ad offerings. But I doubt that they have any particular plans to share that with the people whose news they're aggregating," said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute.

Kelly McBride, another Poynter faculty member, said "it's always been obvious that Google didn't develop Google News as a public service - they intended to make money off it. I'm ok with Google News making money," she said.

The introduction of ads to Google News search could prove to be controversial. One has to wait to see its results.

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