Google News Plays The Badge Achievement Game

Google News announced you can now earn badges for reading news on Google News. The badges are awarded by topic, such as stock market, Apple, Harry Potter, U.S. Politics and so on. The more you read about a specific topic through Google News, the higher the badge reaches. It starts at Bronze and goes to Silver, Gold, Platinum and then Ultimate.

Here is a video demoing the feature:

I personally was granted the achievement of the Apple badge:

Your badges are private by default, you however share your badges with your friends. You can also add custom sections by hovering on a badge and clicking “add section”. To get started with badges, visit Google News from a signed-in account with web history enabled and then visit this page the instructions page for more details.

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About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.