Google News has rapidly risen to be one of the most popular news sites on the Web, with more than 9.5 million unique visitors a month and not one journalist on staff. Now, it’s gotten even better.
Google News has indexed the full text of hundreds of thousands of articles going back 200 years and created a valuable new news archive search.
You can access the new Google News Archive Search directly at http://news.google.com/archivesearch
Using the site, you can search for people, events and issues from publications such as Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Washington Post, as well as news article databases such as Factiva, LexisNexis, Thomson Gale and HighBeam Research.
When you search, the site automatically creates a timeline of the results, sorting the articles by relevant time periods using computer algorithms and enabling you to get a quick historical overview.
For example, search for polio (click here to see results) and you get results going all the way back to 1910.
You can further refine the results by clicking on the suggested date ranges in the left column. Or you can switch to the “search articles” view and sort the results by publication.
I should warn you: Much of the content in the results isn’t free — in most cases, you have to subscribe or pay a fee on the publisher’s site to access the archived material. Still, it’s invaluable to be able to search so many sources so quickly, for free, online.
And here’s a trick: You can use the Advanced Search to search for articles listed as “no price.” That doesn’t always mean they’re free — sometimes Google just isn’t aware of the price — but sometimes they are. You can also use the Advanced Search to search within specific dates.
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For another searchable news database online, check out LexisNexis AlaCarte! (previous column)
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