14 DAY TRIAL // Google has debuted a useful search feature, it's now displaying the latest story titles for news-related websites instead of the regular text snippets. Titles are listed along with an approximation of how fresh they are. Google hasn't said anything about the change, but it rarely does when it comes to small changes and tweaks.
The new snippet is displayed for news-related searches as well as searches for a specific news source. Search for "news," "new york times" or any similar terms to see the new snippets.
These don't show up for individual story pages, only when the homepage is listed in the results, which makes sense. The story titles now completely replace the search snippet description of the websites.
This probably won't be a problem since it shows up for large, trusted news sources which most people may already know about. In fact, for a news site, having the latest entries listed rather than a general description is probably a lot more relevant and informative.
If you spot a story which may interest you from the search results, you'd be a lot more likely to click on the search result, as opposed to generic and mostly constant descriptions.
It looks like the most recent and perhaps the most popular stories of the moment are listed for any one website. You can also go directly to any of the news stories by clicking on their names inside the search results page.
Google has always prided itself in its ability to get users to the information they are looking for as fast as possible. While most other websites do their best to keep you where you are, Google wants you out as soon as possible.
More recently, Google has started to add more information to the search results page itself keeping users there rather than pointing them in the right direction. Of course, for many searches a fast, direct result is preferred. [via Google OS]