Developing a news dashboard from Google News

[voldemortlucky]

Hi all, so glad I found this helpful Reddit community! I hope someone can advise me on this.

Task: I’m a beginner building a financial crime news dashboard using Get Data / Web then inputting an URL from Google News. In my mind (for now), the dashboard would have multiple tabs each shows a list of news articles sorted by date with embedded hyperlink related to a topic (or search keyword). For example, a tab for “fraud” news, one for “money laundering” news, one for “insider trading” etc… I get data from using Get Data / Web and use this hyperlink https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=KEYWORDIWANT. I have largely followed this tutorial on Youtube

The list would just follows this format:

[Article 1’s title] - [Date Published] - [Link]

[Article 2’s title] - [Date Published] - [Link]

(so on)

Questions:

1. I noticed Google News doesn’t give many quality articles. Is it possible to pull my data and combine with other news agencies or website such as the Financial Times, WSJ, Bloomberg… If so how do I go about it?

2. I noticed using Google News, articles sorted by date published would contain lots of duplication. For example, if the search keyword is money laundering sometimes the last 10 articles would be just the same story published by 10 different newspapers or websites, is there a way to avoid this? Or is there a better news aggregator than Google News?

3. Instead of having multiple tabs of pre-determined topics, is it possible to have an input box on the dashboard where user can input their own topic or keyword and my dashboard would split out the list of articles sorted by date? If so, how do I go about it?

Appreciate any advice or guidance on this? Thanks everyone!

[v-shex-msft]

HI @voldemortlucky,

#1, You can consider to add new query tables that designed with web connector and rest api to getting data from those news sites.

#2, In fact, these should not be suitable to be processed on power bi side. Perhaps you can consider to use AI tool to do some pre-processing on these results records extract these articles keyword and store the them to a new field.
Then you can use the keyword field to exclude this similar news from different source.

#3, I'd like to suggest you use the custom visual text filter to input search string, then you can setting the visual itself not displayed when not filter applied to it.

Business Apps – Microsoft AppSource

Show or Hide a Power BI Visual Based on Selection 

Regards,
Xiaoxin Sheng

[voldemortlucky]

Thanks a lot Xiaoxin,

1) I think I get your suggestion in principle but I'm a beginner and not entirely sure how to check if a table has "web connector and rest api" to get data. Appreciate if you'd have any further guide or videos to point me at the right direction for this.

2) This sounds above my capability with PowerBI. I may just have to live with it or find another way but thank you.

3) I'm not entirely sure what you mean because wouldn't using custom visual text filter just filter on pre-imported data? I was looking for a feature when user can put in their own text and the dashboard would then update the list with articles containing that keyword. Or am I misinterpreting what you was trying to say?

[v-shex-msft · Accepted solution]

HI @voldemortlucky,

#1, Sure, you can take a look at the video that uploaded by Chris webb. (his blog shared lot of blogs about power query usages)

Accessing API and web service data using Power Query - by Chris Webb - YouTube

Chris Webb's BI Blog 

#3, AFAIK, current power bi default filter and visuals did not support these type of searching features. For this scenario, I'd suggest you to check the custom visuals about text keyword searching to confirm if someone design custom visual that suitable for you requirements.

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng