YouTube is implementing several changes to how it displays news stories in the US.
These changes all involve making authoritative sources more readily accessible.
”Authoritativeness is essential to viewers, especially during fast-moving, breaking news events, so we’ve been investing in new product features to prominently surface authoritative sources.”
Google’s three-pronged approach to achieving this goal includes taking the following actions:
- Providing more context on breaking news
- Displaying more highlights of breaking news
- Surfacing more local news stories.
More Sources & Context on Breaking News
One of the ways in which YouTube will add more sources of breaking news is to display text articles when authoritative videos are not yet available.
News outlets often break news by writing articles first, because they can be produced faster than videos.
During the initial hours of major news events YouTube will now link to articles when users are searching videos of a specific story.
Expanding Top News Section
Google plans to double the amount of countries where it displays both the Top News section in search results, and Breaking News section in YouTube.
Currently, these sections are available in 17 countries including the US, UK, France, Italy, Japan, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria.
Displaying More Local News
Google has begun testing feature that surface local news in the YouTube app for TV screens across 25 media markets around the US.
Local news on YouTube has seen strong engagement so far, Google says, and there are plans to expand it to dozens more markets around the country.
