News Archive Search Help

News archive search provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. Users can search for events, people or ideas and see how they have been described over time. In addition to searching for the most relevant articles for their query, users can get a historical overview of the results by browsing an automatically generated timeline. We provide two ways of searching: Search Archives, which presents articles in order of relevance to the query; and Timeline, which presents a timeline of events and articles associated with the query. The timeline is dynamically generated in response to each query.

Search Articles Results - Frequently Asked Questions

Search Articles Results

1. Recent Results - We provide a number of options to look at recent Google News results from the past 30 days.

2. Archives Results - We provide a number of time periods for you to examine, which we've determined are likely of particular interest for your query.

3. News Alerts - For any search term, you can easily click to set up a News Alert that will send a summary email of results to you for a particular query.

4. Show Timeline - Displays a chronological view of the events/articles relevant to your query.

5. Representative article - The representative article for a group is selected based on its relevance to your search.

6. Related articles - Articles related to a single story or theme within a given time period are grouped together to allow users to see as broad a view of the events and viewpoints and possible.

7. Related web pages - These links allow users to search the web for pages related to a group of articles as a whole. To facilitate this, we construct a suitable query based on the common themes of the articles in the group.

8. Article price - This appears only for results the require a fee to read the article. Note that there is no cost for clicking on these links and that you should be able to view at least a short preview of the article without payment. The fee is required by the host of the article to view their content.

Frequently Asked Questions

What content is included in News archive search?

News archive search searches across a large collection of historical archives including major newspapers/magazines, news archives and legal archives. Search results include both content that accessible to all users (such as BBC News, Time Magazine and Guardian) and content that requires a fee (such as Washington Post Archives, Newspaper Archive, and New York Times Archives). In addition to crawling content online, we've also worked with newspapers to digitize materials via our News Archive Partner Program. Through partnerships with newspapers around the world, the News Archive Partner Program makes unique and previously-unavailable newspaper content searchable and browsable online.

How do I use News Archive Search?

From the Google News home page you can click on the link that says "News archive search" or you can godirectly to our News archive search homepage. In addition, for selected queries, results from News archive search will be integrated into Google Web Search as a separately marked group.

How do you create the timelines?

Our timelines are generated entirely by computer algorithms. We look at all articles relevant to your query, try to identify the most relevant time periods, and select one or more results in each period. We then display the results in chronological order. Eg, the timeline for Duran Duran allows you to follow the band as it matures from teeny-bopper music to 80's MTV sensation and onward through multiple revivals. Since no humans are involved, the timelines may not always be perfect - but we'll keep working on learning new ways to automatically organize search results in this way.

What are the Archive dates on the left hand side of search results?

When you perform a search, we automatically identify key time periods for your query - these are likely to have interesting results. We present these time periods as suggestions on the left hand side. Clicking on these allows you to restrict your search to specific dates. If you want to restrict search to periods that you don't see in this list, you should use Advanced archive search.

Why do some results have prices on them?

Some of the historical archives included in news archive search require a fee for viewing the complete article (such as Washington Post Archives, Newspaper Archive, and New York Times Archives). Note that there is no cost for clicking on these links and that you should be able to view at least a short preview of the article without payment. The fee should be required only to view the entire article.

How do I find articles that don't cost anything?

Depending on your query and time of interest, this may or may not be possible. You can try clicking on the "all related" links to check other articles in the group. You can also use advanced archive search to restrict your search to articles for which we aren't aware of a price. We would like to warn you that since older articles often require a fee, such searches may miss quite a bit of history.

Does Google get paid when I purchase articles I find on News Archive Search?

No. We do not receive payment when users purchase articles. Nor do we accept payment for inclusion in news archive search. Our goal is to help our users find the most relevant articles for their queries.

How come there are no articles describing the Great Schism of 1944 in the International Dialectical Basket-weaving Association?

Many historical archives are still completely offline. Even many newspapers & magazines that have recent articles or recent archives online haven't digitized articles from 1944. We hope that with time, more news archives will be available online which will allow users everywhere to read even more of the history as it unfolded. Through our News Archive Partner Program, we are working with a growing number of newspapers to help them digitize their unique collections and make them available

The older articles in your search are often from US sources. Does the rest of the world have no viewpoints or history?

We believe it is important to include archives from all over the world, to represent as many viewpoints, to help understand and how and why things happened the way they did. For recent time periods, we already include a large collection of articles from many countries. For older time periods, we are working with international partners to make it possible to find much more.

Where can I find Paper of Record content?

In our effort to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online, we acquired some content from the Paper of Record service. You can see the list of content we already have live here and are still processing in this effort here.

There are also a handful of specific titles, listed here , that we know used to be available at Paper of Record and for which we do not have the rights. We have reached out to the content owners for these titles, but not all want to participate in Google's programs. For this list of titles you may need to travel to a library for access if you are unable to find an online source, or contact the publisher directly.

Click here for more information on how to find specific titles in the archive.

How can I submit my content to be included in News Archive Search?

We are looking at interesting historical collections, including both news materials already in digital form and hard copy archives to be digitized via our News Archive Partner Program. If you have an archive that you think would be a good fit in News archive search, we would love to hear from you.

How do I request removal of a result from News Archive Search?

It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other applicable intellectual property laws. If you find results in News archive search that you believe infringe on your rights, please see our Digital Millennium Copyright Act Page.

What if I still have questions?

Please contact us.