[edit] Getting accepted in Google News

Can I suggest my personal website for inclusion in Google News?

At the moment, Google News tends not to include articles from personal websites and blogs.

What requirements do I have to meet in order to be included in Google News?

Google News attempts to include content from a wide variety of news sources, and we welcome content from diverse editorial perspectives.

They have some technical best practices that make it much easier for them to include your content:

• Article URLs should be unique, permanent and include at least three digits that don't resemble a year. If you prefer, you can use News Sitemaps to submit articles with URLs that don't contain at least three digits.
• Your articles should contain text, rendered in HTML, in order for us to be able to understand your content properly.
• There are a variety of other specific technical issues that we address in our Help Center.

If your website follows these best practices, you can suggest your site for inclusion in Google News here.

My website was accepted in Google News a few days ago, but I still can't find my articles. Is something wrong?

Once we notify you that your site has been accepted in Google News, you may have to wait up to a week or two before your content will start to appear in Google News.

To check whether your site has been accepted in Google News, you can use the site: operator, as in [ site:example.com ], in the search box located at http://news.google.com.

[edit] Including my content in Google News

Why aren't my images showing up in Google News?

There are a few possible reasons, which we explain in our Help Center:

• Your images are hosted on a different domain from your main site (for example, your articles are at mynews.com and your images are at myimages.com)
• Your images are too small, or the aspect ratios are different than what we look for
• Your images aren't inline (i.e., they're clickable)
• Your images may be too low-resolution
• Your images may be positioned too far from your article titles
• Your images may lack captions

Why do all my articles have a strange title in Google News, like "Share this" or "By Jane Q. Journalist"?

Typically, this is because your articles' anchor text, <title> tag and the headline in the article body are all different from each other. If that happens, we attempt to determine the correct title anyway, and you may be surprised by what we decide!

What is the "unique number" or "3 digit" rule?

This is a method that Google News uses to determine what is, and isn't, a news article. As part of this process, we look at page URLs. Since most static pages, and non-news content, have URLs without any digits at all, we look for digits in article URLs as a way of distinguishing them from more static content.

More specifically, we require that article URLs contain at least 3 digits, in any order, and that they not resemble a year. For example, example.com/200/news.htm is ok; example.com/2004/news.htm isn't. example.com/2004/1/news.html would also work.

How do I get author names to appear in Google News for my articles?

Just use the word "by" when crediting the author, and put that credit (the byline) between the title and beginning of the article. For example: "Corn prices rise following cold front, by John Doe".

[edit] Sitemaps questions

Should I submit a News sitemap?

We think you should. News sitemaps make it easier for publishers to control what we crawl, and you can use error reports in Webmaster Tools to see what problems we've encountered with your articles.

Why can't I see the option to submit a News sitemap in Webmaster Tools?

You can only submit a News sitemap once your site has been accepted in Google News. Once your site has been accepted, you need to add it to the console in Webmaster Tools. Make sure that the address you add to the console is the same one that's included in Google News; for example, if Google News thinks your site is at http://www.example.com and you've added http://example.com to your console, you may not be able to submit a News sitemap.

Once I've submitted a News sitemap, do I have to resubmit it each time I publish a new article?

Nope. We'll crawl your sitemap frequently and automatically include articles we find there.

If I submit a News sitemap, will Google News stop crawling my regular section pages?

Nope. They crawl sitemaps in addition to the normal crawl process, not instead of it. However, if you'd like them to stop crawling your site's news section, please let them know.

How often does Google News crawl my News sitemap? In Webmaster Tools, it appears to be crawled only once per day.

Google News crawls sitemaps much more often than once per day. The Webmaster Tools "last accessed" time is misleading; you can check your website's logs to see how often Googlebot-news visits your sitemap (or any other page).

[edit] Help! Something's broken!

Why have my articles stopped appearing in Google News, even though they've been showing up previously?

This most commonly occurs following a site redesign. If you've changed your domain name, your article URL structure, or your site layout, and your articles no longer appear in Google News, you should contact the Google News support team.

If you haven't redesigned your website, there may be a problem with your News sitemap.

You can also check out the error reports feature in Webmaster Tools, which will help you identify problems we've been having including your articles.

[edit] I have something to say about this FAQ

You should probably say it in the Forum thread devoted to this topic.