Google plans new news search method

Google has plans that will dramatically improve the results of internet news searches, by ranking them according to quality rather than simply by their date and relevance to search terms.

At the moment the company's search engine throws up thousands of "hits" in response to simple entries such as "Iraq", which lead to news websites. These are ranked either in order of relevance or by date, so that the most recent or most focused appear at the top of the huge list.