Friday, July 16, 2021
At Google, we want to help everyone understand the world by connecting people with relevant and authoritative news
from a variety of trusted publishers. Today, we’re answering some common questions we’ve heard from publishers to
help them better understand how news appears on Google News and Google Search.
Where does news appear on Google?
News content can appear on several different Google products, including
Google News, Google Search, Google Assistant, YouTube, and Discover. For the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on Google News and the
News surfaces within Google Search, since most
publisher questions pertain to these products.
Google News (which comprises the
Google News iOS and Android apps, as well as news.google.com) includes a diverse set of features that help people
find links to the latest news, along with the ability to follow specific topics and news sources. For example, the “For you” feed contains news
stories based on your interests, while the Headlines section within the
app surfaces fresh, newsworthy stories for all users in a particular region. People can also search within Google News to find links to content.
Google Search can show links to news content in web results, but Search also contains two news-specific surfaces. The Top stories carousel often
appears at the top of Search results to highlight relevant news stories when people search for information on a timely topic like a recent sports
game or the latest scientific breakthrough. Navigating to the News tab in Search helps people narrow their search results to focus on news-related
results, which can help provide broader context for something in the news.
Is my site eligible to appear in these places?
Your site is automatically considered for Google News and news surfaces in Search—no application required. You just need to produce relevant
content that’s identified as:
While we previously had an application process to appear in these news products, this process was retired nearly two years ago when we
launched Publisher Center in December 2019.
This change allowed us to identify more eligible news content across the entire web, including from sites perhaps overlooked
in the past, because they didn’t know they needed to apply.
The eligibility details here only apply to Google News, Top stories, and the News tab in Search.
These details don’t apply or impact the ability to appear in web results in Google Search. Learn more about
how to Get your website on Google.
How do I know if my site is appearing?
It’s best to look at the performance reports on Search Console for Google News
and Google Search (filtered to the News search type) in Search Console.
These reports indicate if your site is receiving traffic from Google News and news surfaces within Google Search. If so, you know that your content
is eligible and relevant to appear. For more information about how to track performance, learn
how to Measure
the impact of Google News.
Is there anything I can do to improve my visibility?
Your site is automatically considered for Google News and news surfaces in Search—no application required. Once our systems
identify content that is eligible to appear, its ranking is determined
automatically by a variety of factors, including relevance of content, prominence, authoritativeness, freshness, location, and language.
You can use the Publisher Center to define certain details
about your site—RSS feeds, website URLs, videos and more—that can help manage your brand and make it easier for Google to index
your site. The Publisher Center can also be used to create a “News source” page for publications, if you don’t already have one.
This page allows Google News users – if they choose – to follow
the publication and see its latest content.
While the Publisher Center can help you manage content that’s deemed eligible, eligibility itself is determined through the automated
process. Given this, being approved to
use the Publisher Center, submitting content through it or having a News source page does not mean content will appear in:
- Search results at Google News
- Google News features like “For you” or Headlines
- News surfaces in Search such as Top stories or the News tab
If you don’t want your content to appear in Google News, you can
block access to it without affecting your continued indexing and ranking in Google Search.
I’m following all your advice. Why am I still not appearing?
Make sure you’re regularly producing original news content and are high in expertise, authoritativeness, and
trustworthiness (our blog post about core updates has useful advice on this).
Our systems run regularly and will automatically detect if a site has risen to better meet the criteria.
No system is perfect, and we’re always looking at ways to improve our automated system. But since
retiring our application process nearly two years ago, the current automated system has enabled
thousands of new publishers—from national brands to emerging local publications—to receive visitors
from Google News and news surfaces in Search.
We also encourage anyone to visit
our How news works on Google site for
more information.
