Google News Archive Search is slated to go live today with an index of links to articles mostly from newspapers and magazines.

Google built the service's index with links already in its general Web search index, as well as with links it gained access to through arrangements with publishers and news aggregators, says Jim Gerber, Google's content partnerships director.

The service ranks results based on their level of relevance to the query, and preference is not given to links from Google partners, which include The New York Times, Factiva, Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

The service covers roughly the history of the past 200 years and results can be grouped in various ways, including by timelines, topics and publishers.

Google News Archive Search does not return links to multimedia content, nor does it include links to reference material like books and encyclopaedias, says Anurag Acharya, a distinguished engineer at Google. It is not linked with Google's Book Search service, he adds.

The links lead both to free and fee-based articles. Google merely provides links and does not get involved in monetary transactions between users and publishers for access to the articles. There is no integration with Google's Checkout online payment system, he adds.

The service has no monetisation model, and there is no financial arrangement between Google and the publishers with which it is partnering, Acharya says.

Google News Archive Search is launching with a US English-language interface, although it contains content in other languages. The plan is to make it more global through collaboration with international partners and to launch it for other countries.

To access the service, users can go to http://news.google.com/archivesearch or via a link from Google News (http://news.google.com). Google News Archive Search links will also surface sometimes on Google.com results.