WebProNews

News aggregation site Topix recently added a new facet to their site. Contextual news links provide additional stories regarding a subject like say sports or business. While they've been building for a while, the site is really coming together.

Gary Sterling of the Kelsey Group wrote about it at the SearchEngineJournal. The way it works is a number of standard topics like business, entertainment, sports, etc. show up on the right hand side. One picks their favorite subject and a variety of other topics show up for the viewer to peruse and read. When one picks a story and reads, there will be additional material, via a link at the main site and that's when both sides get paid.

Some of the players include The Chicago Tribune, The Street, the BBC and a host of other periodicals. The company also has a PPC service also. According to ClickZ, Topix has been working with 177 site owned by Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Tribune companies. These newspaper giants provide a lot of content for the Topix.

"When you get a user that reads an entire article on a news site and they still want to know more, if they click into an experience where they're doing to delve into deep Web results, those people tend to be hyper-interested in the topic and they monetize even higher," said Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix.net told ClickZ.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.