Google News has added a side bar to its search site that allows users to rank news stories in terms of when they first appeared, conjuring up remarkable similarities with its ever-growing Google Blog Search.
News searchers can view stories posted on the net within the last hour, last day or past week along with a new section, which contains archives of old stories stretching back to the 1950s.
As RSS feeds and news alerts are also offered, bloggers have noticed that the new sidebar, on the left of the screen is remarkably similar to the Blog Search, which has five options available to blog searchers ranging from 'last hour' down to 'past month'.
Unofficial Google-orientated blog, Google Operating System pointed out on a posting last week: "Google News added links to Blog Search in October last year and the integration was successful, even if it was just a small step.
"Eventually the two search engines should merge, as blogs become more influential and credible."
The move indicates the growing importance and respectability of blogs and in the future they could be ranked up alongside quality news sources, thus boosting the web traffic inflows.
