Google news site submission

Appear in Google News

Google News can help you reach new audiences and attract avid news readers. With Google News, users can: Access to your Account.

How Google News works

Google News is a news feed containing the most relevant articles in the world from registered news sites. The more relevant your article is, the higher it is in search results. Google's algorithm combines articles on the same topic into a primary topic. CNN, New York Times, LA Times, USA TODAY, NBCNews, and NBCNews are among major news sources. Smaller sites have higher chances of being included by the algorithm in sections dedicated to a specific topic, i.e. health.

What is Google News?

Google News is a news aggregator that curates a customizable flow of recent news articles and stories from the last 30 days. Google then displays them based on a variety of factors including user preferences and interests, relevancy, content freshness and authority. Google also prominently features News articles within their main search results pages. The default view is Top stories and is driven by location and user preferences, as well as user preferences. You can also customize the feed to cover stories you are interested in. The feed is organized into categories, depending on your location and language settings.

How to Get Your Website on Google News, Discover, and News-Related Sources

Until December 2019, publishers had to submit their sites to Google News for it to be considered. Google announced that publishers are no longer required to submit sites. Google News works differently than Google the search engine. You still need to meet certain criteria like: Having high-quality content, being approved or having already been approved in the past. Your site is automatically considered for Top stories and the News tab of Search. It is now available to publishers through the end of next year. We are happy to clarify that Google’s new policy and policies are in place. We cannot comment on whether you should be allowed to submit your site to Google.com or if it is a non-Google.com.

How to Submit Your Site to Google News

Google’s Publisher Center and click Add publication. You’ll need to fill out some specific information. Using the same Google account for both Google News and Google Search Console, you can easily verify your site. You can even add an RSS feed, add a custom logo, and even set up Google ads if you’d like to monetize your content. For more information, visit GSC's GSC setup guide and the GSC guide to sign up for this article.

In the world of SEO, making Google web results a primary focus and priority is standard, however, if your site or blog is consistently publishing relevant content relating to current events, you may be able to expand your reach. If your site already produces high-quality, relevant and newsworthy content, you should be in Google News results! It not only aggregates articles from over 50,000 news sites worldwide, but it has the potential to substantially increase the traffic to your site. According to an article on The Atlantic, about 4 billion people view Google News results each month, which result in about 1 billion clicks. Who doesn’t want a piece of that action?

For anyone that has tried to get their site in Google News before, it can be a tricky process due to the number of guidelines and caveats. To help navigate the waters of Google News, the basics for getting your site included are listed below.

Are you in Google News Already?

The last thing anyone wants to do is waste their time, therefore, before you go through all the steps to ask for submission to Google News, make sure you check to see if your site is included in already. To do this, select the “news” vertical in Google and do a site search (e.g. site:example.com). As seen below, you will be able to see how many (if any) results appear in the news vertical. 

If you do, then your work here is done. Enjoy your inclusion in Google News! If not, keep reading to determine how to get in with the in-crowd!

What are the requirements for Google News?

Now that you know you’re not included in Google News, you are going to have to apply for inclusion. However, before you do that, you need to make sure you are playing the game by their rules.

See, where Google’s normal web search can be described as the club in high school everyone gets to join (as long as you follow the guidelines), Google News is like the varsity football or cheerleading team that only select the best. And in order to be the best, you have to know what you’re getting into.

Read through Google’s general, technical and quality guidelines and make sure you meet the requirements. If you decide to bypass this step and just submit your site for inclusion, the chances are you will be denied. And if you don’t make the cut the first time around, while you may not have to wait a year like you would to try out for the varsity team, you will have to wait 60 days. And who wants to wait another two months?!

Just make sure you do it right the first time. It takes patience, but it’s worth it!

How do I apply?

Now that you have determined that you are not already in the Google News search results and your site meets all the above requirements, you are ready to apply for inclusion.

Just a quick note to the eager beavers out there – If you decide to submit your site for inclusion before making sure you meet all the guidelines, the chances are you will be denied. This means that you won’t be able to reapply for another 60 days. This is why it is so important to make sure your site is ready.

To apply, all you have to do is fill out this form. They ask for basic information like the site URL, location of the original news articles, where author contact information can be found and so on.

Once you have that submitted, you should continue to monitor your site in the search results. If you get rejected, you may not know why, meaning you have to go through all the guidelines again and make sure your site meets that criteria. Then, you can re-apply 60 days later.

What is a Google News sitemap and do I need one?

Sitemaps for Google News are not necessary and it doesn’t help a site rank better in this vertical’s search results. Why even have one then, you ask? It’s simple, really. While the Google News sitemap may not help with rankings, your articles will get discovered faster, only your news articles will be crawled, the information in your articles will be more accurately displayed and your articles can be annotated with meta data.

There are two main differences between news and web sitemaps.

1. Make sure your are properly using their keywords and queries
2. Make sure the articles listed in your News sitemap are no more than two days old and contain a publication date

To show illustrate a proper new sitemap, below is a screenshot of the sitemap Google gives as an example: 

To help you setup your own Google News sitemap, take a look at this page on Google’s site for some of the tags that should (or could) be included in your news sitemap.

How do I submit my Google News Sitemap?

Once you have created your sitemap, you can easily submit it using Google Webmaster Tools. Here are some simple step-by-step instructions that will help you do just that.

1. Log in to Google Webmaster tools
2. Verify the appropriate site
3. Once the site is verified, find the “Sitemaps” section under “optimization” in the navigation bar on your Dashboard page
4. Choose to “submit/test a sitemap” from the Sitemaps section of the navigation bar
5. Enter the path to your sitemap in the text box that pops up
6. Submit the Sitemap

Quick Tip: Keep in mind that you have to be included in Google News before you submit a sitemap. If you jump the gun and submit it before you are included, you may receive errors.