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Google News presents a wealth of historic and up to the minute news syndicated from a wide range of trusted news sources. Is it, however, more than just a glorified news syndication site?

From it's uncluttered initial page layout and familiar search mechanisms, Google News is an ideal tool to search for news and press releases. However, it is the ability of the user to personalise the news that they see at that is the site's most powerful feature.

You do not need a Google account to access the personalisation features, but it is recommended so that you can access your personalised setup from any machine on the internet and continue to use your personalised version of Google news after clearing cookies from your cache.

The first and most obvious personalisation feature is the ability to chose which blocks of news content you want to show on your news page and in what order. The default configuration is for
a "top stories" section at the top of the page followed by two columns of four "blocks" each.

Clicking on the "Personalise this page" option on the right hand side of the "Top Stories" section will give you access to a small control panel from which you can rearrange these blocks and change their content.

Standard Google News content is broken up into "editions" and "topics". Editions are typically related to a particular geography, such as the US or the UK, whereas topics tend to be suitably high level. Notably some editions, such as the US edition, have specialised topics areas for important events such as elections.

You can also change the number of stories shown in any given section, allowing you to draw down more content in areas of particular interest.

However, Google News is not limited to drawing down content purely based on the high level "edition" and "topic" categorisation. Underneath the two columns to pre-set news, there are buttons that will allow you to add new standard sections (as described above) or "custom" sections.

A custom section can draw down news based on a set of keywords, with additional filters on language and news section. News articles must contain all of the keywords to be eligible for inclusion in the section.

The ability to create custom sections for news articles is one of the most powerful features of Google News, allowing you to create your own customised and self updating news page. Searches can be created for a favourite football team, TV show, or upcoming movie with ease and attaching this configuration to a Google account means

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