BigNews Help
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Ask BigNews?
Ask BigNews is a search and browse service that helps you find and track the most important and most talked about stories in the news. You can:
- Use the BigFactor to quickly find the hottest stories to follow
- Track stories automatically and follow their progression over time
- Check out the Top Videos in the news and the most Popular People
- Apply your own spin on the news with News Source Filters
- Get additional facts and background material on searches using Ask.com's heralded three-panel interface
- Dive into a deep, rich array of videos, images, blogs, and articles as they become available for a wide range of stories
- Be the First to "Digg" a story using our unique Digg module that identifies the most interesting stories with no "Digg" counts yet
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What is the BigFactor?
The BigFactor accounts for four key dimensions:
Breaking
This factor accounts for the timeliness and freshness of a story, giving more weight to breaking news.
Impact
This factor measures a story's impact across the Web, taking into account search frequency and mentions in articles, multimedia and blogs.
Media
This factor identifies the number of quality images and videos associated with stories, providing rich insight.
Discussion
In a sense, the Web is like one big water cooler. This factor weighs the level of those discussions and which ones are making the most noise.
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Why aren't the stories sorted by BigFactor?
Stories from the Top Stories section are culled from various categories to give you a snapshot of the most important stories from all categories. Each subsequent category page is ordered by the BigFactor.
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How does Ask BigNews work?
A complex series of computations and algorithms are used to make it all happen. Is it magic? No, but it's darn close! We use many factors and components to find the hottest, most relevant stories. Story freshness, source authority, social media references, article content, and multimedia availability all come into play.
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How can I find my favorite paper or website's news?
Given the large number of factors involved, your hometown paper or favorite may not appear as a source when browsing the site. However, it is likely considered in the overall importance of a story, as there are more than 10,000 sources that factor into our backend algorithms and computations. Check out our Perspective Filters to find sources in specific categories such as "European News" or "Asia News." Future releases will introduce even more great personalization features.
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What News Source Filters are available?
The Ask BigNews "Source Filter" function allows you to search for news stories from specific sets of sources that share common characteristics such as geography.
Currently, BigNews offers filtering for the source categories:
Africa
Search for news provided by sources from the African continent. Example sources: AllAfrica.com, Daily News South Africa.
Asia
Search for news provided by sources from the Asian continent. Example sources: Rediff.com, China Daily.
Europe
Search for news provided by sources from the European continent. Example sources: BBC, Deutsche Welle.
Latin America
Search for news provided by sources from Latin American and South American regions and the Caribbean. Example sources: Latin America, Buenos Aires Herald.
Middle East
Search for news provided by sources from the Middle East region. Example sources: Gulf Daily News, Middle East Times.
Oceania
Search for news provided by sources from the Oceania region. Example sources: Sydney Morning Herald, Pacific Islands Report.
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How do I search for News using Ask BigNews?
Type your query in the search box and click the search button. In the middle of the page, you will see your results. On the left, you have the ability to refine your search by Category Type and News Source Filter; or explore the key Movers & Shakers (when they appear). On the right, you'll see facts and background material related to your query.
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How do I track stories using Ask BigNews?
Click on "Track" and then either on "MyNews" to track the story on the Ask BigNews site (you can login so the site can remember your results) or via your favorite RSS reader (Bloglines, for example). Stories are presented in temporal order so you can easily follow the progress of a story.
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How can I see my saved MyNews results from any computer?
We do not require you be a registered user of MyStuff (Ask.com's personalization feature) to add stories to MyNews; however, if you wish to keep your tracked stories when moving from computer to computer, you'll want to login into MyStuff.
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How is Ask BigNews different from other news sites?
Ask BigNews gives you a multi-layer perspective of the news through our unique presentation of our search results. You quickly check the latest headlines or delve deep into what various sources have to say about the stories that interest you. You can use Source Filters to see how different sources "spin" the news. Ask BigNews does not rely solely upon the major news agencies, but rather considers various types and sizes of sources to give you a more complete picture of what's going on in the world.
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How long can I keep my saved MyNews clippings?
If you do not have cookies enabled -- or think that you might clear/disable your cookies at some point -- you can still save your clippings by opening up a free MyStuff account. As long as you are signed into MyStuff when adding MyNews clippings, your clippings will be saved for as long as your MyStuff account remains active.
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Why am I getting a 404 or similar error when I click on a link?
Unlike general web pages, which can remain static for months or even years, news content changes very, very quickly. As a result images, videos, articles, and blogs that we reference may have changed locations or disappeared altogether, thus invalidating the URL. It may be possible to do a search on BigNews and find the same topic or specific item at another location (we add new content in our search index all the time). You may also wish to do a general Web search or a search on the specific content provider's site.
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Where does Ask BigNews find news content?
Ask BigNews uses algorithms and content crawling to monitor almost 10,000 news and media outlets, to find the highest quality stories from the most relevant, trustworthy sources available on the Internet.
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What is a "BigPicture" page?
A BigPicture page is a dynamically generated page with results related on a specific story. Available elements related to the story, including articles from various sources, blogs from the blogosphere, videos, and images are surfaced to give you the "BigPicture." We also include a History feature (when available), that allows you to go back in time to see previous BigPicture pages related to this current story, allowing you to "rewind" to an earlier part of a story and understand its evolution
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Why does the History feature only go back 30 days?
BigNews seeks to bring you more timely and relevant news results, rather than acting strictly as an archival service. We have found that most topics have many, many specific stories that change quickly in days or weeks. For example, "Iraq" is a topic. But the stories within that topic include U.S. politics, war strategy, international politics, and specific events taking place in Iraq on a day-to-day basis. An individual story typically usually does not span more than 30 days, whereas a topic may span months or even years.
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Why can't I see bigger images?
Ask.com provides a search service, presenting the most relevant and interesting media it finds. However, Ask.com does not always have specific licensing agreements to provide fully rendered, large images in original formats.If you are interested in an image and would like a better or large quality image, please contact the source owner (always noted below or next to an image). You can also click through an image to the source to find the specific article/page where that image was originally posted.
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I already use another news site. Why do I need Ask BigNews?
Do you like finding many viewpoints, not just stories from the wire services? Do you like the idea of a mix of results of videos, images, articles, and blogs in one neat package? Do you like more effective search tools to find a specific story of interest? Do you like the idea of knowing which stories people are talking around the water cooler? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then, we welcome you to Ask BigNews.
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