Publishing on Google News or referencing yourself on Google News is one of the very powerful traffic acquisition levers. Indeed, Google news or Google News are formats very often put forward by the American search engine! Imagine the influence that a page or a blog post could have on your traffic and on your visibility… If you think it can be a good boost for your natural referencing, here are some rules to follow.
Google News: the new 100% digital kiosk
Google News or Google News is Google’s free news aggregator. Available since 2009 in France, it identifies and updates its interface thanks to press articles from media sources deemed reliable on a theme.
How does Google News work?
Google News offers breaking news and articles based on 500 sources. A Googlebot is responsible for indexing the articles as quickly as possible to obtain the “freshest” information possible. In addition to indexing, the Google algorithm is used to position each article according to its relevance as for natural referencing on the SERP.
Regularly, Google carries out tests to develop and increase the sources of information, taking great care to fight against fake news. Why not use this SEO for B2B service to increase your visibility?
Publish to Google News
To continue to organize news and highlight it to improve the user experience, Google News encourages as many relevant and reliable sources of information as possible. To guide this development, Google News provides a getting started guide for content publishers.
Google’s Editorial Guidelines for Publishing on Google News
Here are some editorial guidelines from Google for being published on Google News:
News articles on recent events
Google News values the freshest content possible. It is therefore essential to write the most recent content. To make it easier for Google News to understand the content of your publication, it is possible to attach a label defined by Google to it: Press release, opinion content, user-generated content, blog article, satire, fact checking.
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Rich and original content
Obviously, Google News values the content being the most qualitative. One of the main criteria for being referenced in Google News remains original content. Copy-paste is to be banned urgently!
Transparency on the source of information
To be published on Google News, it is important to be very transparent about how the content is created and the sources for creating the content. You must provide as much information as possible about the author of the content and the sources used to write the content.
Sites and content that contain incorrect or misleading information or are intended to mislead Internet users will be removed from Google News. The subject of the content should also not be of misleading origin.
Transparent information with no commercial connotation
Google News is not intended to become an advertising space! The promotion of a commercial offer (of a product or service) or of an article containing sponsored links is not accepted by Google’s criteria. Indeed, this has an influence on the overall quality of content and rules for webmasters.
Google’s Technical Guidelines for Publishing on Google News
Again, Google News relies on the Google search engine positioning algorithm. Content quality isn’t the only way to get published on Google News. Indeed, the technical part of your website must be optimized for indexing and also for the navigation quality of Internet users. Here are some technical requirements for Google News that remind the importance of the Googlebot crawl for the indexing of your articles.
Permanent headings and URLs
Unique and permanent URLs are part of the standards in the indexing of your web pages. With frequently changing redirects and topic structure, the crawler is unable to recognize new pages and newer content. URLs must be unique and permanent. GoogleBot News will follow HTML links, without an HTML link it will not be able to navigate your website.
Content accessibility
Like any website page, the Googlebot will follow the instructions in the robots.txt file or the Meta tag. Be sure to submit a robots.txt file tailored to your needs and an up-to-date Google News sitemap to facilitate the work of the crawler and the accessibility of the content.
Regarding the encoding of your site, Google News values a site encoded in UTF-8: put the odds on your side to be able to publish on Google News. Finally, be aware that multilingual content is to be avoided for the moment.
How to be referenced on Google News?
All technical and editorial guidelines dictated by Google must be respected to be referenced on Google News. It is necessary to take into account all the instructions to the webmasters of the number 1 search engine. But this is not necessarily enough. To be listed on Google News, follow these steps:
- Request your site’s inclusion in Google News for Publishers
- Verify ownership of your website via Google Search Console
- Find the “Get your articles featured in Google News” button
- Fill in the requested information, URLs and sections to be indexed
- Wait a few weeks to find out if Google validates the indexing of your articles
After this wait, you will know if the site is “included” in Google News or “disapproved”. By improving the quality, relevance and technical part of your web articles, you can try again 2 months after your first request.
To be referenced on Google News, to publish on Google News, it is essential to meet Google’s expectations. This can be extremely complicated in some cases. However, if you have a blog with a good reputation and quality content, you can hope to see this opportunity come true and gain extraordinary traffic. It is possible to write and publish content with links to commercial pages (product page for example) without requesting its inclusion and to request the inclusion of much less commercial sections without links.
Also Read: Add Me To Search – How To Create Your Own Google’s People Card?
