As spotted by Valentin Pletzer on Twitter, Google is working on a new section that appears when a user searches for a story, and that story appears in the ‘Top Stories’ of the Google Search. This new section is titled ‘For Context.’
As the name of the new section suggests, it basically shows related stories or links to relevant articles.
‘Top Stories’ already provides several news articles from authentic and famous online publications. But previously, when a person wanted to read more articles on a particular topic, they had to delve into the search again, or check out the ‘Relate Articles’ which appeared at the bottom of most of the articles.
Now, however, a related article will appear there and then underneath the top story in the ‘For Context’ section.
Sadly though, this feature is not rolling out for the masses yet. Only a few users can see it as of yet, and this secondary story in the ‘For Context’ section is not available for every primary article in the ‘Top Stories.’
This means that this ‘For Context’ section will not appear underneath every story. Rather, it will be there under some stories only. Now how does Google decide which stories need a secondary link, this question remains unanswered as yet.
One theory that is making rounds is that Google may be providing this ‘For Context’ section to link a secondary article or story from the same publication that published the primary story. So, if a user wants to read an article published by Forbes, the ‘For Context’ section will link them to another related story from the same publication only. This behavior has been noticed by Pletzer too on a primary story from CNET.
To some extent, this does make sense. However, some questions arise in the mind. So far, this feature is quite ambiguous, when it should have been clear and simple. There is no need for any kind of ambiguity in such a straight-forward thing. Besides, so far, it is showing secondary links for only some stories and specific topics. So, this kind of selective behavior from Google also does not make much sense at the moment.
Secondly, it is understandable that this feature will bring more efficacy and refinement to the search results, but we already had the feature of ‘Related Articles’ that was just doing fine for us all for a pretty long time. So, what else is ‘For Context’ going to bring for us, which might make it different and far more beneficial than ‘Related Articles?’
It can only be hoped that soon, Google will answer all these questions. Till then, we can only wait and see.
Read next: Google is working on a shortcut for ‘Google Lens’ in the Google app’s search bar
As the name of the new section suggests, it basically shows related stories or links to relevant articles.
‘Top Stories’ already provides several news articles from authentic and famous online publications. But previously, when a person wanted to read more articles on a particular topic, they had to delve into the search again, or check out the ‘Relate Articles’ which appeared at the bottom of most of the articles.
Now, however, a related article will appear there and then underneath the top story in the ‘For Context’ section.
Sadly though, this feature is not rolling out for the masses yet. Only a few users can see it as of yet, and this secondary story in the ‘For Context’ section is not available for every primary article in the ‘Top Stories.’
This means that this ‘For Context’ section will not appear underneath every story. Rather, it will be there under some stories only. Now how does Google decide which stories need a secondary link, this question remains unanswered as yet.
One theory that is making rounds is that Google may be providing this ‘For Context’ section to link a secondary article or story from the same publication that published the primary story. So, if a user wants to read an article published by Forbes, the ‘For Context’ section will link them to another related story from the same publication only. This behavior has been noticed by Pletzer too on a primary story from CNET.
To some extent, this does make sense. However, some questions arise in the mind. So far, this feature is quite ambiguous, when it should have been clear and simple. There is no need for any kind of ambiguity in such a straight-forward thing. Besides, so far, it is showing secondary links for only some stories and specific topics. So, this kind of selective behavior from Google also does not make much sense at the moment.
Secondly, it is understandable that this feature will bring more efficacy and refinement to the search results, but we already had the feature of ‘Related Articles’ that was just doing fine for us all for a pretty long time. So, what else is ‘For Context’ going to bring for us, which might make it different and far more beneficial than ‘Related Articles?’
It can only be hoped that soon, Google will answer all these questions. Till then, we can only wait and see.
Read next: Google is working on a shortcut for ‘Google Lens’ in the Google app’s search bar
