While Google News lets you search for news items published within a particular range of dates, perhaps you are searching for a particular news story or subject of a story and do not know the exact date when the information was written? Or what if you are researching a news story or subject that spans months, if not years, and to get a synopsis of the available information you'd like to view articles written over that period?

A Google Labs project called Google News Timeline lets you display a graphical timeline of when matching articles were written. The timeline can span days, weeks, months, years, or decades. For example, a search for "Stephen Colbert" over the last few years may display a 1999 news article from the "New York Daily News" touting "A PROMISING START FOR JON STEWART'S 'DAILY SHOW'", a 1997 "New York Times" opinion piece co-written by Stephen Colbert, and a "USA Today" 2005 article discussing his show.

As another example, search for "cold fusion" over the last few years and you may see a "New York Times" article from 1989 of a scientist asserting that positive results were found in experiments, a 2004 article from the "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" discussing the US Government reviewing research, or a 2007 story in "Chemistry World" discussing a symposium on cold fusion.

Click on the links for "News", "Time Magazine", and "Wikipedia Events" to show or hide these types of sources from the matching stories. You can also click the "Add More Queries" button to add different types of sources such as "Baseball Digest", "Engadget", and New York Yankees scores. While a limited number of sources are available, if this labs project progresses it's possible Google may alter this list.

Google News Timeline - http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/

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