Google bringing old newspapers into search scope

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 09 September 2008 13:07

Your IT - Home IT

Google has begun working with newspaper publishers to digitise back issues, making the material accessible via its search engines.

The move is an extension of the company's previous effort to publicly index existing electronic archives, such as those operated by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

To further expand the range of publications included in the index, Google is also working with companies such as ProQuest and Heritage, which digitise printed periodicals.

The project will help counter criticisms than an Internet search will generally turn up little information that was published more than 20 years ago.

Some publishers will choose to use the index to draw traffic to pay-to-view archives, while others - such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - are making their imaged pages freely accessible.

In the longer term, Google's plan is to include such material in the results of mainstream Google searches in addition to Google News results.

"This effort is just the beginning," said Google product manager Punit Soni. "As we work with more and more publishers, we'll move closer towards our goal of making those billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable, discoverable, and accessible online."