(Photo Credit: Google)

Google News now allows avid readers in the U.S. to earn badges for reading news articles, delivering a game-like experience to users.

In a blog post, Google wrote that the shareable badges come in various levels starting with Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Ultimate at the top, while users can only earn these badges after reading a sufficient amount of articles under a particular topic.

Google account holders can share these badges with friends to stimulate conversations, interact with others like a news analyst, and simply take pride of knowing more when it comes to current events.

After clicking a badge, users can make a customized section for news topics that are of interest and receive updates automatically.

Google provided a help page containing details and a video to help explain the badges feature.

Over 500 badges are now available, including one for the Harry Potter series.

The main advantage of Google News badges is that it organizes news you actually read into categories.

Google insinuates taking the Google News badges feature up a notch after closing the beta phase — integration with social network Google+ perhaps.