Google News is expanding its news sections beyond election coverage and recommended reading with a Local News area which serves targeted news stories based upon the geolocation of Google users. Once a user is logged into their Google Account, they can enter their zip code in Google News to be served local coverage customized for their area.
To give it a test, I entered my zip code, 33618.
Then, extremely targeted local news was uploaded into my personalized Google News page. This is quite useful for tracking local news or news for a specific area (like if you live abroad).
The URL is set up quite simply with a zipcode for easy access and changing of localized results : http://news.google.com/news?geo=33618
Something I would like to see in this section is locally targeted sports news, since sports news is normally read on a local level for local team and news.
I also noticed that while still logged in, I clicked over to Google.com and searched for pizza.
Even though I willingly gave Google my zip code, the pizza results served unpersonalized images and generic pizza company pages; and no local information via Google Maps for my local pizza delivery businesses, which would be much more relevant than Google Image indexed pizza clip art.
Come on Google, how about some synergy?
