Google News Drops Author Search Command

Dec 19, 2011 - 9:36 am 1 by
Filed Under Google

Google NewsGoogle has dropped a feature on Google News to help you locate articles by authors.

The feature was the author command and worked where you typed in the Google News search box, [author:firstname lastname]. Now when you search using that command, nothing is returned.

Google replaced it with the authorship link in the search results.

Google News Author Command Not Working:

Google News Author Command

Google Authorship Link:

Google Authorship Link

This was recently reported at the Google News Help forum and Erik from Google said:

The author: search operator is no longer available. For author-specific Google News content, I would recommend use of the Authorship capabilities in Google News, introduced last month. Integration with Google+ circles means easier following and engagement between authors and readers.

That is true, but what if I want to restrict my search to search for specific stories written by that author? There is no way to do that now.

Plus, the authorship link rarely shows, if ever, in the Google News results. They do show in the web search results.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

 

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