Hello,
I have a question for anyone who has interest in Google News.
Question: Have you applied for Google News with this theme?
I have recently, and got rejected. Not sure why, i’ve followed all the rules and guidelines. Have you applied and been successful?
Thanks 🙂
I’ve recently spotted two sites that use Newspaper on Google News, so I’m sorry to say that I don’t believe the theme is the reason for the rejection. I’m getting ready to apply to Google News myself – crossing my fingers …
Oh right, thanks for letting me know @colecoboy84. I will look into this more and see what i’m doing wrong.
Could you let me know the outcome of your application with Google News? Will be interesting to find out. Thanks 🙂
I’ve been rejected by them before – that was a couple of years ago on a totally different site. I got a Google News sitemap plugin, which I didn’t before, so hopefully that will help since I now have a news XML sitemap in addition to the general XMl sitemap.
I’ve seen a lot of sites on Google News that have horrible design and godawful content, in some cases just recycled press releases and rehashes of other people’s stories. So I’m inclined to believe that contrary to what they would claim, quality of content and presentation don’t rank high in their criteria. I think what they’re looking for is frequency – if you’re posting sizable amounts of content daily (even if it’s junk) they will consider you a news operation, otherwise they’ll consider you a hobby/personal blog.
Yeah i’ve heard this. People say 3 posts (a-day) minimum helps increase your chances for Google News approval.
I have also got the XML sitemap plugin for Google news and submitted it with my application through the ‘Google Webmaster Tools’, but still got rejected. Makes me think it’s something to do with the URL structure? (something their system can’t pickup or crawl).
Google has been cleaning house on junk news sites (our news network sites have been in GN since it was in beta many years ago) and getting stricter on what kind of sites they will allow; specifically if you’re just copying YouTube videos and cloning stories from major news portals, stealing images without permission, and not creating “first of its kind” original content, they might not take your content. They also don’t want “made up” stuff like a psychic blog, or things which attack other groups, and they do want to see an editorial staff, content which is not “guest posts” or paid content.
You need a Google XML sitemap, Google Webmaster account, unique URL for each story — traditionally they needed a unique ID number for each story which is why you see those strings of numbers on URLs to most real news sites.
Often done as
site/12345/pretty-url-here/
or
site/pretty-url-here_12345
But they do have specific guidelines you can read – both for content and technical requirements (for example they don’t expect to grab content more than 2 days old, so you need to have “current news” every day once you submit your application). Bylines, proper dates/times, etc.
Also remember that the XML sitemap, and Google News sitemap are two totally different things. Your XML sitemap should be working for awhile (not a brand new site), and you should not ping Google News with your news sitemap until approved.
Hope that helped somebody.
I know of many websites which have been kicked out due to “low quality content” this year.
I have not yet submitted one of our sites running this theme, which we’re still messing with as it’s consolidating 3 ooooold sites into one new magazine (ga-ga.com); but one of our sites running this theme *is* in GN right now, although the site is 10 years old and pre-dates GN. We switched over with zero trouble. This theme is properly optimized for Google News as long as your content is newsworthy.
Hello Christopher (@neotrope), thanks for giving me some tips with Google News and telling your story.
I haven’t heard about the ‘clean-up’ so maybe that’s why? It seems less people are in-fact getting approved by Google News now, which is a shame in many ways.
The only reason i’d like to be a part of it, is that, the people i’m competing (the same category) are showing up in the top of Google’s Search page in the ‘News’ section due to keywords that users type in, and i have better quality work showing up down page 1 (because of SEO). So people are going to click the ‘News’ sections more times than my article.
I also changed my URL structure before applying as i saw many people who have been accepted have the same URL structure. Mine is:
Website URL: http://[website].com/%5BID code]-name-of-the-article/
Wordpress (back-end) URL: http://[website].com/%post_id%-%postname%/
I hope that helped understand my issue better?
Thanks 🙂
Hi,
the post ID before post name is popular way to do it now. In olden days GN used to like having date in there too, but that was prior to the XML sitemaps, and the XML news sitemap which have the date/time and modification as part of it.
Some of our sites even had .php on the end as in oooooold days many systems expected a file extension for individual pages, vs the landing page in a real directory.
Main thing to get accepted now, is actually having NEWS and having it first, posting ORIGINAL articles from a staffer (with byline), not having too many ad systems running in addition to AdSense, NO advertorial or paid posts/sponsored content, all the usual stuff like privacy policy, legal statement, publisher page on G+, etc.
You can always revisit your content and resubmit, but they may tell you they will only revisit in three months, which is a pain.
Thanks for informing me.
I tired adding ‘.html’ extension on my posts but then old URLs didn’t work, so it wasn’t any good as i have over 900 posts on my blog.
I will try posting news before other sites get to it first, and then apply 😉 See if that works, haven’t had anyone who has the amount of experience you do informing me, so thanks for letting me know.
We have 7 or 8 sites in Google News. One got kicked out 3 years back when we added a couple of columnists who Google didn’t like (a psychic who was writing about some spiritual stuff, but it wasn’t “news” — learned lesson on that one). We removed one. Working on new site to submit. We have one site in GN using this theme, and another site we’re working on — it’s actually being used for other things too like testing mod_pagespeed on our server, and some things related to syndication.
Having original images for each post also really helps – not copied from other sites. So, if you do a review of a video game – make your owm images. Stuff like that. Make sure your post titles are UNQIUE too. Basic SEO stuff, obviously; but Google hates news sites with only “duplicate” content.
Hope that all helped somehow 🙂
Thanks, is using pictures from a URL classed as ‘copying’ content?
Also, is it possible you could email me a URL of one of your sites in Google News so i can take a physical look at a website that you’ve successfully got into Google News with?
Hopefully going to apply in the coming weeks and apply all the changes you’ve mentioned above to the website. Hope for the best 🙂
Hi,
sure. You can look at one of our oooooold sites currently being “rehabilitated” using this theme, as a work in progress — it has been in Google news since they launched. We switched over from our in-house WP theme to Newspaper end of last year (time flies!).
http://PublishersNewswire.com
(NOTE: above site is several versions of theme back, when the visual composer was still built in; I was sick most of May and June with a high blood sugar, onset diabetes issue **sigh** and so I am waaaay behind on things since May. Slowly catching up. That is ALSO why you don’t see a visual composer home page setup there at the moment …. I got sick right when about to do that.)
Sorry to hear about your health Christopher, hope you’re doing good now 🙂
Great site, i’ll check it out now and compare it with my current site that i want to apply with Google News with.
Having a quick look, I think one of my issues is that i’m missing a ‘editorial-staff’ page.
Many thanks 🙂
@Gee95
thanks … health getting better. Stress finally got to me!
Hope you get it sorted.
Just as an anecdote, each time I post my website URL here I get huge influx of comment spam; which I don’t think is coincidental. Moving all the sites to Disqus anyway, which solves that issue mostly.
Eeee.. Got rejected! 😀
Our site which is cruise related got accepted into google news in just a few days after applying. We usually post at least one news report each day and also give credit if anything in the report is from an original source. Also always use quotes for press releases, statements and things like that. Google news is working amazing for our site and usually picks up a new post in less than 5 minutes and thats without using news site maps as we had some issues with site maps in the past.
Site traffic has increased by about 40% and it always helps with other sites linking back to the news article. Another thing to note is making sure you post every day and each post is at least 200 words long.
FYI, Google News requirements have nothing to do with this “theme” but your site contents, editorial focus, original vs “cloned” content, actual editorial staff, number of updates per week, not violating Google policies (e.g., linking to a software product which allows people to download YouTube videos – for example – is a violation of Google policy), paid text links, spammy anchor links to commercial sites which are not “nofollowed,” etc.
Our various sites have been in GN since it was in beta almost a decade ago, and one of our sites running this theme is in GN now.
ref: (RTFM) – GOOGLE OFFICIAL REQUIREMENTS FOR GOOGLE NEWS:
https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en
site address is:
http://www.cruisehive.com
@Christopher Thanks, but i don’t think it’s my technical requirements that are denying my application to Google News because that’s perfect (url structures and content etc) but my ‘About Pages’ and listing biographies about each editors.
These requirements i’m struggling with as i don’t want to put too much details about my editors down, but i don’t know how much is enough?
Hope that makes sense 🙂
