Don’t Look for RSS Feeds in Google News
If you previously used Google News RSS feeds dating back to 2016 or earlier, you probably realized that things have changed a lot since then. In 2017, Google announced that it would be deprecating old RSS feed subscription URLs by December 1st, 2017. Instructions for obtaining the new RSS feeds were given in the Google Product Forums, but those instructions no longer appear to work since RSS options are nowhere to be found within Google News pages. Despite this, there’s still one sneaky way to set up RSS feeds of your news searches. And if that doesn’t work for you, you can at least start using Google News, similar to an RSS reader. Here’s how to set up a Google News RSS feed:
Sign Into Your Google Account, Access Google News and Search for a Topic
Using Google News is really quite simple. As long as you use it while signed in to your Google Account, all of your data will be stored there, meaning you can use it almost exactly like an RSS reader. In a web browser, sign in to your Google account (or create a new Google account if you don’t have one yet). Navigate to News.Google.com. You can either click the category sections in the left sidebar or use the search bar at the top to type in a keyword or phrase that you’d like to scour the news for. For some of the broad categories that appear in the left sidebar (such as Business, Technology, Entertainment, etc.), you’ll see subcategories appear in a horizontal menu at the top of their results, which you can click to filter everything else out. If you’re more interested in stories about a particular subject (as opposed to a broader category), it can help to search for an exact phrase instead of just a word. To search for an exact phrase, include quotation marks around the phrase. You also don’t have to search for just one item at a time. The real power of Google News is that you can search for multiple items. To search for multiple items, type in the word “OR” between the items, but do not include the quotation marks.
Example: “Dallas Cowboys” OR “Houston Texans"Results: Any news articles or blog posts containing the phrase “Dallas Cowboys” or “Houston Texans.”
Sometimes, you want to make sure two phrases are in a single article. This is done the same way as searching for multiple items, but type in the word “AND” instead of “OR.”
Example: “Dallas Cowboys” AND “Houston Texans"Results: Any news articles or blog posts that either contains both the phrase “Dallas Cowboys” and the phrase “Houston Texans” in the same article or blog post
Google will then search through every website classified as news and bring back results for your search.
Follow and Subscribe to a Topic
Similar to searching and adding an RSS feed to your RSS reader, you can choose Follow at the top of your topic to add it to your Google account.
Save Stories to Read Later and Customize Your News Experience
All you have to do to read a story is click on it, and it will open in a new tab. Most RSS readers have a save feature that allows users to bookmark stories to revisit later, and Google News does too. Hover your cursor over any headline, and look for the bookmark icon. Press it to save it for later. You can also select the three vertical dots icon to tell Google what you do or don’t like. You can choose to:
View full coverage for additional information from other sources on the same story;Hide all stories from that specific source;Like the story to get more stories like it; andDislike the story to get fewer stories like it.
View Your Topics and Saved Stories Under Favorites
To see all the headlines for the topics you subscribed to and the stories you saved for later in the previous steps, select Favorites in the left sidebar. Your topics will appear as cards under the Topics & Sources tab. To see your saved stories, use the horizontal menu at the top to navigate to Saved stories.
Download the Google News App
Google News is even more powerful and fun to use on mobile platforms with the official app for iOS and Android devices. Take your news with you on the go, see news from the topics you’re interested in, save stories for later, and customize your entire news experience just like you would in an RSS reader. With Google News, you don’t even need a reader—you just need to use it like one!
