Google News and Google Blog search had updates over the weekend. Google News announced the visual update to their home page, while the Google Blog search update was not announced and less visual in nature.

The Google News update includes three main things:

1. New color frames around each section
2. YouTube logos to embedded news videos
3. Section pages (Top Stories, Business etc) now feature the media files from partners

Most people don't mind the update, and there are not many complaints or compliments on it. There is discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Blog Search also updated but this was not written about by Google. Jeremy contacted me and the team at Search Engine Land to give us the lowdown. Matt McGee did the excellent write up in my absence to explain the update made to blog search. It includes:

• Better at grouping blog posts into clusters
• More and fresher blog posts included in clusters
• Processing new links from blogs much faster
• Ranking algorithm has been tuned a bit
• Slight interface change that most won't notice
• Better at determining the authority

I am a huge fan of Jeremy Hylton, head of the search quality group in Google’s New York office. He is very open about Google Blog Search's advancements and issues and is a down right nice guy.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

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