News SEO and Google News: Policies and Ranking

News SEO is work with two different Google surfaces: Google News (and the news sections in Search) and Discover. Each has its own documented requirements, and they do not match the common list “mandatory: News Sitemap, NewsArticle and E-E-A-T pages”. Neither a news sitemap nor markup is a condition of inclusion. Below: what exactly the Google News policies require, how a news sitemap works, what influences ranking and what Google says about Discover.

What the Google News policies really require

Per the Google News policies, for content to appear in Google News or news surfaces it should follow best practices for article pages and must not violate Google Search’s overall policies, spam policies or the policies for Search features (dangerous content, deceptive practices, harassing, hateful, manipulated media, medical, sexually explicit, violent extremist, violent and gory content, vulgar language). There are also separate policies:

• Ads and sponsored content: advertising should not exceed content; sponsored content must not be concealed as editorial; sponsorship should be clearly disclosed.
• Misleading content: preview content must not promise details that are not in the underlying content.
• Transparency: news sources should provide clear dates and bylines, information about the authors, publication and publisher, information about the company or network behind the content and contact information.

That is the documented basis for what popular lists call “E-E-A-T pages”: pages about the publication and the authors exist exactly for transparency (E-E-A-T and the author). Dates and bylines: the publication dates help page advises showing a user-visible date labelled “Published” or “Updated” and specifying datePublished and dateModified in markup; Google does not depend on a single factor and does not guarantee a date is shown.

A news sitemap and markup: not mandatory

A news sitemap is a way to tell Google about articles and additional information about them. You can extend an existing sitemap or create a separate one; a separate sitemap may enable better tracking in Search Console. The news sitemaps help page names these rules:

• update the sitemap as articles are published; don’t create a new one with each update;
• include only recent URLs — articles created in the last two days; remove older URLs or their <news:news> metadata; an empty sitemap is fine;
• one <news:news> per <url>, no more than 1,000 such tags per sitemap;
• required tags: <news:publication> with a name (it must exactly match the name on news.google.com, omitting anything in parentheses) and a language (ISO 639 code), <news:publication_date> (the original date and time of first publication, not when it was added to the sitemap) and <news:title> (without the author name, publication name or date).

Article markup: the help page on Article structured data says directly that there is no markup requirement to be eligible for Google News features such as Top stories, and there are no required properties; recommended ones include author, datePublished, dateModified, headline and image, so that Google understands the content more clearly and can show a better title, image and date (structured data; sitemaps in general are in the lesson on the XML sitemap).

What influences ranking in Google News

The help page on ranking in News: the aim is to promote original journalism and expose users to diverse perspectives. Google does not accept payments to expedite or improve appearance or ranking; participation in an advertising program like AdSense has no effect on ranking. Ranking is algorithmically influenced by a range of factors: relevance, prominence, authoritativeness, freshness, usability, location and language. Some sections are personalized by interests. Google gives little feedback on ranking of individual sites. The general principles are in the lessons on helpful content and core updates.

Discover

Discover is a part of Search that shows people content related to their interests. Content is automatically eligible for Discover if it is indexed and meets Discover’s content policies; no special tags or structured data are required, and eligibility is not a guarantee of appearing. The help page recommends:

• avoid clickbait and headlines that mislead or withhold the essence; titles should capture the essence of the content;
• offer content that is timely, tells a story well or provides unique insights;
• use quality images: at least 1,200 pixels wide, more than 300,000 pixels in total, 16:9 aspect ratio, with large previews enabled via max-image-preview:large; specify the preferred image via og:image or schema.org, avoid a logo or text-heavy images (image search);
• provide a great page experience.

Traffic from Discover is less predictable than from keyword-driven search: the help page advises treating it as supplemental. It can change because of shifting interests, content types and Search updates.

What is not in the documentation

• “A news sitemap and NewsArticle are mandatory for Google News” — for features such as Top stories no markup is needed; a news sitemap is a way to tell Google about articles.
• “A high CTR in regular search and NewsArticle help get into Discover” — the Discover help page has no such statement.
• “Traffic grew by 35% after markup” — a story, not Google data.

Checklist

1. Every article shows a date and an author; the site has information about the publication, the publisher and contacts.
2. Sponsored and advertising content is clearly disclosed; ads do not exceed content.
3. Headlines reflect the content and do not mislead.
4. If a news sitemap is used: only the last two days, the correct publication name and language, the original publication date.
5. For Discover: large, quality images, max-image-preview:large, og:image.
6. Decisions do not rest on “mandatory” markup or on promises of growth.

Mistakes

• Treating a news sitemap and NewsArticle as a condition of inclusion.
• Leaving articles older than two days in a news sitemap.
• Putting the date added instead of the original publication date in the sitemap.
• Passing off sponsored material as editorial.
• Expecting stable traffic from Discover.

What next

This is the last lesson of the course on links, local and vertical search. For voice answers to news queries there is speakable markup — see the lesson on voice search. Next comes the Advanced & Future SEO course.