How to Publish to Google News Publisher Center (Step by Step)

Google news. We all see his suggestions when we use the search engine. But how do you get your article there? Are there any requirements? An application process? 🤔

In this guide we will show you how how to publish in Google News Publisher Center along with the types of pieces that are usually selected as high-level results.

📚 Table of contents:

What is the Google News Publisher Center?

Google Publisher Center is the dashboard used to get listed on Google News. It’s the number one resource you need to publish on Google News.

Google News Publisher helps content creators:

• Publish and manage your content on Google News.
• Control branding elements of the publication.
• Collaborate with writers and editors in your organization.
• Monetize this content with a paywall.
• Monetize by pushing Google Ads to content.

Then what is Google News?

This is the Google New Publisher Center frontend page!

• Google Publisher Center: The backend interface where media companies and content creators manage and publish content.
• Google news: A news curation tool that showcases relevant articles from news sources in or under Google search results news Google tab.

So in order to get published on Google News, the place where all your potential readers are waiting, you first have to go through the Google Publisher Center.

The benefits of being listed on Google News

• Immediate distribution to the masses: With almost 600 million visits per month, Google News makes your publication accessible to a large part of the Internet. Google automatically shows news stories for relevant searches, so this is one of the best ways to get people to notice your post.
• It’s free: Just sign up, add your publication and start linking to content on your site.
• Gain Authority and Brand Awareness: As a respected, curated news tool, Google News has a reputation for only presenting what is absolutely relevant, timely, and authoritative. Finding your way into this circle of authority builds brand awareness and convinces readers to trust your content.
• Double the effectiveness of your organic search: Google News serves as a completely separate entity from the work you do for organic search results. Therefore, you create an environment where content is viewed more often and give them two chances to land at the top of the leaderboard.
• Land at the top of Google: News results typically end up at the top of search results or somewhere in the first few lines, making them often more effective than ads.
• Link building at full speed: Landing a high-ranking article on Google News creates a situation where other news sources attribute that information to your post. As such, they link to your website and eliminate the need for link building. And if you end up with a popular article, that article can create hundreds or thousands of backlinks, boosting your overall SEO in the process.

How to publish to the Google New Publisher Center

Creating a publication on Google News Publisher is one thing; It’s a whole different story that shows in the results.

👉 Here are the steps to create an account and improve your chances of ranking in Google News:

1. Look for a suitable publication
2. Meet all Google technical requirements
3. Create a publication on Google News Publisher

1. Find an appropriate publication

• Google News actually allows anyone to create an account and publish articles. There used to be requirements and an application process to even be considered for the news index. But that has changed; All aspiring journalists can now participate.
• However, Google says it only indexes “quality, compliant” content.
• It also defines Google News as a place where users can discover breaking events, diverse content from publishers, world news, articles, and personalized content.
• Submitting a publication, URL, or RSS feed to the Publisher Center does not guarantee that it will appear or rank well in Google News.

Our general guidelines for publishing (and ranking) on ​​Google News)

Based on our testing and feedback from others who have used the Google News Publisher Center, here are some ways you can increase your chances of publication and exposure on Google News:

message content

Google News has some vagueness about which publications are shown, but one thing is clear: they only index news.

That means your blog post on how to build a desk or your trip to Thailand is unlikely to get in the running.

What characteristics of a publication make it news?

• Publish a lot. Not once or twice a week, but several times a day.
• Have a team of writers. This is not required, but usually allows for frequent publication and different opinions.
• Share timely information. It is important that news is relevant in the present, otherwise nobody will want to read it.
• Have a News XML Sitemap. This is a unique sitemap that recognizes articles as news.
• Offering multiple sections on a website for unique topics, like sports, world and travel.
• Use of Google AMP pages. This isn’t required, but it helps if you want Google to recognize you as a news source.

Regularity and multiple perspectives

Your publication should feature fresh and regular content, but also points of view that come from unique angles.

readability and accuracy

This is related to how Google wants “compliant” news. Your publication must maintain a level of accuracy in order to resonate with readers. It’s almost impossible to rank high in Google News if your articles aren’t formatted correctly or constantly contain typos or grammatical errors.

The same goes for the site as a whole: is it easy to navigate your site? Does it look like 20 years ago? Are there high-quality images and other media elements to support the content, or is it filled with broken images?

trust and brand

Although Google News has opened its doors to all publishers, no matter how well-known, there is still something to be said about trust.

Readers trust certain brands like the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and even smaller local publications. They have built brand awareness and consistently provide concise, researched information.

For fledgling publications, that means you need to focus on building your brand and trusting every article.

👉 Here’s how:

1. Complete every aspect of your Google News Publisher account with modern, recognizable branding elements.
2. Include trust symbols on your website and in content, such as B. Sources cited, quotes from experts, details of research results, and even contact information like phone numbers and email addresses.
3. Form well-informed opinions and base everything you write on research and supporting evidence.

2. Meet all Google technical requirements

What’s interesting is that you don’t actually need a Google News Publisher account for Google to index your articles. However, there is definitely an advantage in speeding up the process and basically letting Google know that you have quality content to share.

Regardless of how Google News gets your content, it uses algorithms to crawl your site. This means that you rely on a computer to determine message value, correct formatting, and retrieve details such as media elements or titles.

Therefore, publishers must follow any technical guidelines provided by Google. Otherwise, the algorithm may not know that some of your content is an article.

👉 Here are the most important things:

Site structure requirements

• Have permanent section pages. Changing sections and URLs for those sections makes it harder for Google to crawl your site.
• Only use HTML links. The Google News bot only crawls HTML links, so avoid links that use images or JavaScript.
• Match all anchor text to section titles. This should also help with SEO.
• Make sure you’re not using blocked content, links, and directories. The main reason something might be blocked by Google bots is because they have special meta tags, header specs or robots.txt files.

Encoding and Language Requirements

• Google recommends all publishers to encode their news pages in UTF-8. Contact an expert for this.
• Stick to one language in all content. Google News bots are unable to understand articles that switch between languages.
• Use completely different publications for other languages. For example, you should create a separate website if a French version is added to your English publication.

Individual item requirements

• Make release dates and headlines as simple as possible. The key is not to confuse the bots crawling your site, so stick with HTML.
• Never republish an article with a different URL. Keep the old URL to avoid confusing bots crawling your site. Multiple URLs for the same content also hurt search engine optimization.
• Give each item a unique URL. Publishing multiple articles to one URL makes it impossible to view them in Google News.
• Keep persistent URLs with roughly the same content at all times. It’s okay to update articles from time to time, but adding a new article to the same URL every day causes problems.

RSS Feed Requirements (and How to Link Your WordPress RSS Feed to Google Publisher)

For RSS feeds, especially from WordPress sites, you can submit standard RSS or Atom feeds, but Google Publisher will only accept feeds that meet its technical requirements.

read this technical RSS feed requirements here and check out our summary below:

• The feed must not contain duplicate images or missing content such as social media embeds, images, or media.
• Your feed must not produce incomplete articles.
• The feed should not cause delayed crawling from Google or slow refresh due to caching.
• Your feed should not contain duplicate images.

These technical requirements are in place because WordPress RSS feeds occasionally mess up fine articles, e.g.

So you want to make sure none of that happens. Submitting a standard RSS feed may not be sufficient.

To properly associate your WordPress RSS feed with Google Publisher, install the GN Publisher plugin.

In WordPress go to Settings > GN Publisher. The plugin creates new RSS feeds for your WordPress blog and its categories, all of which comply with Google Publisher’s RSS requirements. Just copy the feeds you want to associate with Google Publisher and add them to your publication in the section below.

3. Create a publication on Google News Publisher

If you’ve made it this far, your release is:

1. A good candidate for indexing on Google News.
2. Compliance with all Google technical guidelines.

ℹ️ Now it’s time to create an account with Google News Publisher.

Step 1: Sign in to Google Publisher and add your first publication

Go to Google Publisher Center home page and either create a Google account or sign in with your current account.

First you’ll see a big empty white space with just a few tools on the left to get started.

Click on that Add publication Button.

Fill out:

• Publication name
• Primary website property
• Location

Check the box that indicates your publication is permanently located in the specified country.

click Add publication.

Step 2: Edit the publish settings

Before submitting it to Google News, it’s important to set up your publication settings.

To do this, click on Publish Settings next to your new publication listed in the dashboard.

Highlight your publication’s primary language, then enter anything you missed during setup, like the publication name or location.

Add additional property URLs and touchpoints for your publication. Remember, touchpoints create trust between you and the reader, and apparently Google wants that too. click Next Continue.

Step 3: Add visual styles

This sends you to the visual styles Page where you can upload visuals that will appear when users view your content on Google News.

• Add a square logo to appear next to indexed articles.
• Upload a light-themed rectangular logo for display on lighter surfaces.
• Upload a dark-themed rectangle logo for users who have darker skins on their devices.

You can also upload fonts that you use in your publication.

Select the Save on computer button when finished.

Step 4: Design your Google News publication and submit it for review

After that, go back to the main page and click the Google news Button.

This is where you configure every aspect of the publication that appears on Google News. click To edit.

Add basic information like:

• A detailed description of your publication.
• A category your publication falls into (e.g. sports or world news).

Add specific distribution limits as well, if needed Google Characteristics from your verification in Google Search Console. click Next.

Add any sections in your news publication. Anything broken down by a unique URL and section title on your site, like sports, cooking, travel, or world news.

You can add sections by Feed, web location, Videoor Personalized feed.

Remember it feeds require a RSS URLnot just the URL to the page.

Set the section title and choose who can view it. click Add.

Note: If you are using the GN Publisher plugin to create compliant WordPress RSS feeds (explained earlier in this article), copy and paste the new GN Publisher feeds into this section (the RSS or Atom feed box ) from Google Publishers. This way, none of the usual problems with WordPress RSS feeds arise.

Click on Next.

This final page provides a preview of your Google News feed on the right. Click the “Review” links on the left to ensure you fix any issues and read the Terms of Service.

When that’s all done, you can click Publish!

As a final step, and as a way to improve your chances of being indexed on Google News, fill in the following:

• Organization Settings
• user permission
• content labels

That’s it! Now you know how to publish to the Google News Publisher Center. 😎

Get started with the Google News Publisher Center today

In this article, you have learned some important elements for how to publish in Google News Publisher Center:

1. Google News is where people read curated content, but publishers must publish their content to the Google Publisher Center in order for it to be indexed on Google News.
2. Indexing on Google News has incredible benefits for visibility, link building, search engine optimization, and more.
3. Anyone can create an account and publish in the Google Publisher Center, but this does not guarantee indexing on Google News.
4. You must post breaking news to be displayed or ranked in Google News.
5. To increase your chances of being indexed, create niche news content, publish regularly, and ensure readability, accuracy, and trust.
6. Make sure you follow all of Google’s technical guidelines before posting to Google News.
7. Create a publication on Google News Publisher with all branding elements filled out.