Topix Upgrades News, Adds Email Alerts

Topix.net, one of the most useful news aggregators and search tools on the open web, has enhanced its service with a number of new features.

Topix is now crawling more than 7000 sources (primarily but not exclusively U.S. publications) and offering more than 150,000 “topically based” pages. These include local pages (a page for each zip code in the U.S.), now enhanced with direct links to local information such as aerial images, television listings, movie times, etc.

The relevancy of the service has greatly improved. Factors influencing relevancy include prominence of an event, timeliness of individual news stories) and something Topix calls “magnitude” — the prominence of a story both in its topic area and in the overall mix of current news). Each article’s “NewsRank” score is visible next to the headline and snippet provided for the story.

Keyword email alerts are now available. Results are delivered either daily or weekly (it would be great if an “when published” option was also available).

On the Topix.net home page you’ll now see a “Live Feed” on the right-side of the page. This contains an “up to the second” look at what Topix is adding to their database.

Finally, if you visit a topical or local Topix.net page and then return to the home page, the pages you’ve visited are added to the main menus as dynamic sub-menus (“flyouts”) as you mouse down the top-level category list below the search box.