How to get your website listed in Google News
As Google continues to dominate the search engine market share, website owners are constantly looking for new ways to drive traffic from there to their own websites. Inclusion in Google News is a fantastic way to get more exposure for your content, as Google gives top stories higher visibility. In the past, there were several steps to be considered for a listing in Google News. At the end of 2019, the Google guidelines changed and they removed this requirement to submit your website there.
- Instead, Google says 2021:
“Publishers are automatically considered for top stories or the news tab of the search. All you need is high-quality contentGoogle
How does content appear in Google News?
If you want to know how to get your newsworthywebsite content into Google News, this post is for you.
What is Google News?
Google News is a computer-generated vertical search engine that collects and aggregates news and headlines from thousands of information sources worldwide. Google then displays these based on a variety of factors, including user preferences and interests, relevance, timeliness and authority of the content. Users can access Google News directly by going to https://news.google.com/. Google also displays the news articles on the main pages of the search results. Find out how you can be displayed in Google News.
Here is an example of what the Google News home screen looks like (the default view is “Top Stories” and is determined by location and user preferences):
Example of the Google News home screen.
Note the following functions:
- Search bar functionality (typical use of the search engine)
- Filtering (region and news type, i.e. modern, classic, headlines or compact)
- Page navigation (fast topic filter functionality)
- Weather app
- Location and preference-based information widget (display of local news based on preferences and location data)
- Selection of editors
- Top stories (regional and global)
- Suggested for you (user behavior and preference-based data)
Why do websites want to get into Google News?
The obvious answer, from a holistic perspective, is to increase the reach, visibility and traffic of brands/experts/services (some of which will ultimately lead to increased sales and bottom line results). Realistically, however, the answer is more complex. More than 60% of people trust Google News more than other news channels. This level of trust, combined with the desired outcomes mentioned above, opens up broader business value outside of the traditional search metrics of impressions, traffic and revenue. Trust can be an important online differentiator between brands and websites, influencing user behavior both in the pre-click (ad) and post-click (website) phases. For many companies, inclusion in Google News is another way to get more out of current and future content. If you invest a lot of time, money and resources into any area of your website, you need to make that investment work for you as a return.
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In addition, the “Top Stories” section can be a quicker entry into highly competitive search results.
Here’s an example of a Google News result that takes up a valuable spot on a highly competitive search engine results page. Google News appears high up in the SERPs.
Access to Google News
As with all search results, following Google guidelines and best practices can get your content included and ranked highly in Google News. In the following sections, we will focus on the most important guidelines you need to follow if you want to be successful in Google News.
General requirements and guidelines
Content types
As you might imagine, the content needs to be current, relevant and of real interest (personalized) to the Google News audience. Content that does not fall into this category includes tips and advice, job advertisements, news, reports or pure information content and sources, such as the weather or share prices.
Originality & readability
The content must be accurate and original. If your site has a mixture of self-created and aggregated content, you need to make a clear distinction. Otherwise, none of it will make it into Google News or stay there for the long term. In addition, the content must be credited and free of excessive distractions such as advertising, videos and the like.
Competence & trust
Content that reflects industry-leading expertise has a greater chance of being included in Google News. This content should offer a clear opinion based on expertise and experience in the field. It should also be supported by trust signals such as a physical address, supporting authorship and telephone numbers. For more information, see the full list of Google’s general guidelines for Google News.
Technical guidelines
Google uses algorithm-based processing when it discovers and crawls articles for inclusion in Google News. There are a number of technical factors that must be fulfilled. Many of these factors are traditional SEO ranking factors, others relate specifically to Google News.
Make sure you do the following to put your plan into practice:
- URLs and anchor links are descriptive of the content, unique and permanent.
- The content is only provided in HTML format. PDFs, JavaScript and other content types cannot be crawled or displayed. In most cases, multimedia content (YouTube is sometimes an exception) is not recorded.
- The domain on which the content is hosted must be accessible to search engine bots.
To learn more, read the full list of Google Technical Guidelines.
Quality guidelines
Quality is present in every single aspect of the Google world. If you are not sure what determines the quality of content, take a look at the quality guidelines for webmasters. Look at your content objectively so that you can compare it with the top-ranking pages on the same topic. Make sure your content exceeds basic requirements such as depth, variation, opinion, expertise, trust and statistics.
It is worth emphasizing again at this point that Google News only accepts news content, not news sources. Trying to get all your pages in is a bad and old tactic and you are doomed to fail, everyone warns about that. In most cases, the content will be industry-specific and company-neutral, i.e. not based on marketing or PR. Furthermore, it may contain expert quotes and opinions, but must not be an advertisement for a company.
Tips and advice for Google News
There are a number of other tactics that can help you get your content displayed and ranked in Google News, but some are debatable. Here are a few of the practical and easy-to-use ones.
Doing the basics well
There are other areas that can have a positive impact on Google News eligibility and ranking – many of which are down to getting the basics right.
News content should be clearly labeled as such.
- Have a unique subfolder (e.g. exampledomain.com/news).
- Each news story must have a descriptive URL that reflects the topic of the content.
- New content (not old!) must be accessible to the user , load quickly and be rich in information.
- They should also have value, be up-to-date, be supported by facts and be independent of sales-oriented tones.
- You should publish news frequently and consistently – for example, every week or every day, rather than 10 articles in one day and then nothing else for a month.
- Make sure that the content is easy for users to read, can be shared and invites them to participate – the more quality signals users receive from the content, the better.
News sitemap
By creating a unique sitemap for Google News and submitting it directly to Google, you can take control of the news content elements that meet or exceed the Google guidelines criteria and highlight those that are most likely to deliver the desired results. As with all sitemaps, this can accelerate and improve the success rates for Google finding your content and displaying it in search results.
Accelerated mobile pages (AMP)
At the top level, AMPs are versions of web pages that have been stripped of almost all types of non-text content that could potentially cause slow loading. AMPs are primarily intended for publishers, as people want to process news content quickly, on the move and with almost any device and different internet connections.
Submitting your website
Although registration is no longer required, registering and submitting your site through Google ‘s Publisher Center offers some additional benefits, as described by Google:
- Control over content and branding: You can design, tag and customize the sections and content of your publication in Google News.
- Monetization option: Place ads within your content area in the app. Google News supports ad placement via Google Ad Manager, including premium ads. Publishers can use paid news.
- Eligibility for placement: Publications with terms and conditions are eligible to appear in the paid section of the app (in the relevant countries/regions). We do not guarantee placement. The publications are selected by our merchandising team based on the timing of the advertising, the quality of the user experience and the relevance to the advertising theme.
In addition, some publishers have reported that they were included in Google News much faster after submitting their site.
Meta news keyword tag & editorial selection
In the past, Google used a meta news tag (meta name=”news_ keywords”) and editors’ picks to allow publishers to identify the topics of their articles. As Google News aggregation became more sophisticated and AI-driven, Google got rid of both features. This change prevented the tags from being misused and placed even more emphasis on the examples described above.
Be listed in Google News: Our conclusion and summary
There is no doubt that there are many benefits to being listed in Google News and it can give your website an entry into highly competitive search results. However, it cannot be emphasized enough that Google only accepts news content. Your content must be correct, original, up-to-date, relevant and of interest to the Google News target group.
Make sure you follow both the Google guidelines (general, technical and quality) and the tips discussed above, and you may be well on your way to getting your news-related website content ranked in Google News.
