How can you get on Google News and improve your vis­ib­il­ity?

Google News no longer requires pub­lish­ers to register their websites manually. Instead, Google auto­mat­ic­ally selects suitable content based on factors such as relevance, timeli­ness, authority and com­pli­ance with its guidelines. Pub­lish­ers can improve their chances of appearing in Google News by producing high-quality journ­al­ist­ic content, ensuring their websites meet technical re­quire­ments and providing trans­par­ent in­form­a­tion about their pub­lic­a­tions.

How Google News works

Google News compiles content from many verified sources in a struc­tured and clear way for users. The portal provides a quick overview of daily events as well as per­son­al­ised news offerings. The menu bar at the top enables nav­ig­a­tion to different sections or per­son­al­ised feeds. There is also the option of using the search function to look up news directly.

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The Google News homepage displays both current headlines, selected according to factors such as news value, timeli­ness, authority of the source and global relevance, and per­son­al­ised content. The latter is based on factors such as click behaviour, reading time, preferred topics and the user’s own location. In the next category in the menu bar, ‘For you’, Google News shows only per­son­al­ised content. The ‘Following’ category gives users an overview of topics, sources, searches and stories they follow or have saved. The remaining cat­egor­ies in the menu bar lead to ‘News Showcase’ and to in­di­vidu­al sections such as local news, business and en­ter­tain­ment.

How to get on Google News

Pub­lish­ers once had the option to create and manage Google News pub­lic­a­tion pages through the Publisher Center, although this never guar­an­teed inclusion in Google News. Since the end of March 2025, Google has auto­mat­ic­ally generated these pages and no longer uses RSS feeds or website URLs submitted through the Publisher Center. Content that complies with Google’s policies is auto­mat­ic­ally eligible for con­sid­er­a­tion. Pub­lish­ers can improve their chances of appearing in Google News by producing high-quality journ­al­ism and following technical best practices.

What has changed?

Pre­vi­ously, pub­lish­ers could create and manage Google News pub­lic­a­tion pages through the Publisher Center. Google dis­con­tin­ued this func­tion­al­ity as part of its trans­ition to auto­mat­ic­ally generated pub­lic­a­tion pages in March 2025. For pub­lish­ers, this means:

• Pub­lish­ers can no longer create or manage Google News pub­lic­a­tion pages manually through the Publisher Center.
• Google auto­mat­ic­ally generates pub­lic­a­tion pages and no longer uses RSS feeds or website URLs submitted through the Publisher Center.
• Content that complies with Google’s policies remains auto­mat­ic­ally eligible for con­sid­er­a­tion, with al­gorithms de­term­in­ing which articles appear and how prom­in­ently they are displayed.

Guidelines for appearing on Google News

As with search engine op­tim­isa­tion (SEO), following Google’s guidelines is essential for pub­lish­ers looking to appear in Google News. To give your content the best chance of being featured, you need to meet certain editorial and technical standards.

Google News now auto­mat­ic­ally selects news sources and articles, with al­gorithms de­term­in­ing which content appears and how prom­in­ently it is displayed. Several factors can help Google recognise your website as a credible news source.

Journ­al­ist­ic quality

• Regular pub­lic­a­tion of timely, relevant news
• Accurate, in­de­pend­ent reporting with proper source at­tri­bu­tion
• Clear dis­tinc­tion between news, opinion and ad­vert­ising
• Headlines that ac­cur­ately reflect the content and avoid mis­lead­ing clickbait
• Trans­par­ent in­form­a­tion about the editorial team and authors
• Clear labelling of cor­rec­tions and updates
• A strong focus on original reporting rather than re­pub­lished agency content or press releases

Trust­wor­thi­ness

• Clear publisher in­form­a­tion, editorial details and ac­cess­ible contact in­form­a­tion
• Author profiles outlining relevant expertise, roles and spe­cial­ist areas
• Con­sist­ent coverage of topics that demon­strate editorial expertise
• Com­pli­ance with Google News policies and general content guidelines
• Clear labelling of sponsored content, affiliate links and ad­vert­ising

Technical re­quire­ments

• Mobile-friendly website with a re­spons­ive design
• Fast loading times and good Core Web Vitals per­form­ance
• Well-struc­tured HTML with clear headings, para­graphs and links
• Content that Google can easily crawl without en­coun­ter­ing un­ne­ces­sary JavaS­cript barriers or login re­quire­ments
• Correct indexing settings, with no ac­ci­dent­al blocks in robots.txt, noindex dir­ect­ives or incorrect canonical tags
• Relevant struc­tured data, such as NewsArticle, Article, BreadcrumbList and Organization
• A properly con­figured news sitemap to help Google discover new articles quickly

Pub­lish­ing original, reliable journ­al­ism and main­tain­ing a tech­nic­ally sound website can improve your chances of appearing in Google News. However, meeting these standards does not guarantee inclusion.

You can use Google Search Console, server log analysis and per­form­ance reports to monitor how Google discovers, indexes and displays your content. These insights can help you identify technical issues and make targeted im­prove­ments.

What role does the Publisher Center still play?

Since the end of March 2025, the Publisher Center has no longer de­term­ined whether a pub­lic­a­tion appears in Google News. Google now auto­mat­ic­ally generates pub­lic­a­tion pages and no longer uses RSS feeds or website URLs submitted through the Publisher Center. The logos and titles displayed on standard Google News pub­lic­a­tion pages are also no longer managed there. Instead, Google uses each website’s favicon and site name.

However, the Publisher Center still provides tools for managing certain publisher settings and mon­et­isa­tion features. Its main functions include:

1. Managing Reader Revenue Manager: Pub­lish­ers can use Reader Revenue Manager to set up sub­scrip­tions, voluntary con­tri­bu­tions and other ways for readers to support their pub­lic­a­tions through their Google accounts.
2. Managing Google News Showcase: Pub­lish­ers par­ti­cip­at­ing in Google News Showcase can manage their settings and content panels through the Publisher Center. Showcase logos can also still be managed there.
3. Managing pub­lic­a­tion and or­gan­isa­tion settings: Pub­lish­ers can update basic pub­lic­a­tion details, business addresses, verified website prop­er­ties and contact in­form­a­tion. They can also manage user per­mis­sions for pub­lic­a­tions and or­gan­isa­tions.

How can you optimise content for Google News?

Although pub­lish­ers can no longer submit their websites to Google News manually, there are still several ways to improve their chances of appearing in Google’s news results. The most important factors are journ­al­ist­ic quality, technical per­form­ance, timeli­ness and a clear content structure. This involves op­tim­ising in­di­vidu­al articles as well as ensuring the entire website meets Google’s technical re­quire­ments.

Op­tim­ising in­di­vidu­al articles

Start by op­tim­ising your article headlines (H1). Include the main keyword near the beginning where it fits naturally, and keep headlines clear, concise and in­form­at­ive. They should im­me­di­ately convey the main news story.

The teaser, or in­tro­duct­ory paragraph, should summarise the main news clearly, include relevant keywords naturally and encourage readers to find out more. Google News may use text from the beginning of an article to generate a preview, so make sure the most important in­form­a­tion appears early on.

Your article image should be relevant to the story and clearly reflect its subject. Use de­script­ive alt text and an in­form­at­ive caption. As Google News may display the image as a thumbnail alongside your article, choose a high-quality image that helps readers im­me­di­ately un­der­stand what the story is about.

The meta de­scrip­tion provides a short summary of your article for search engines. Write a clear, concise de­scrip­tion that reflects the content and includes relevant keywords naturally. You can use your teaser as a starting point, but avoid copying it word for word. Google may use the meta de­scrip­tion to generate a preview, although it often selects text directly from the article instead.

The former news_keywords meta tag is no longer supported by Google News. There is also no fixed minimum word count for articles. What matters most is the quality, relevance and depth of the content.

Op­tim­ising the technical found­a­tions

Maintain a Google News sitemap: A separate news sitemap is not mandatory, but it is re­com­men­ded, par­tic­u­larly for websites that publish news fre­quently. It helps Google discover new articles more ef­fi­ciently. Make sure your sitemap follows Google’s guidelines. A properly con­figured news sitemap should:

• include only articles published within the last 48 hours
• contain no more than 1,000 news entries
• be updated auto­mat­ic­ally whenever new articles are published
• include accurate metadata, such as the pub­lic­a­tion name, language, pub­lic­a­tion date and article title

General technical op­tim­isa­tion for Google News:

• Fast loading times and good Core Web Vitals per­form­ance
• Mobile-friendly design with a re­spons­ive layout and readable content
• Con­sist­ent URL structure with permanent links to articles
• Well-struc­tured HTML with clear headings and content or­gan­isa­tion
• Relevant Schema.org struc­tured data
• Easily ac­cess­ible content without un­ne­ces­sary JavaS­cript barriers, with paywalled content correctly marked up
• No crawling or indexing issues caused by incorrect canonical tags, noindex dir­ect­ives or robots.txt settings

Further content and strategic tips for Google News op­tim­isa­tion

• Ad­vert­ising – Avoid excessive ad­vert­ising, par­tic­u­larly intrusive video ads and animated banners that can affect the user ex­per­i­ence and Core Web Vitals. Make sure your editorial content remains the main focus of each page and that ad­vert­ising is clearly dis­tin­guish­able from news coverage. Follow the Google News policies, which state that ad­vert­ising and sponsored content should not outweigh editorial content.
• Con­sist­ent topical focus – Establish a clear editorial focus and publish content that reflects your expertise. For example, a website spe­cial­ising in political news should pri­or­it­ise political reporting rather than regularly branching out into unrelated lifestyle topics. A con­sist­ent focus helps readers un­der­stand what your pub­lic­a­tion covers and can strengthen its cred­ib­il­ity.
• Timeli­ness and pub­lish­ing frequency – Publish news promptly, par­tic­u­larly when covering breaking stories. Freshness is an important factor for time-sensitive topics, but speed should never come at the expense of accuracy. Incorrect or poorly re­searched reports can damage your cred­ib­il­ity. Aim to publish timely, reliable content rather than simply in­creas­ing your output.
• Managing comments – If readers can comment on your articles, make sure comments are clearly separated from the editorial content. Use ap­pro­pri­ate HTML markup to help search engines dis­tin­guish user-generated content from the article itself. Moderate comments where necessary to maintain content quality.
• Identi­fy­ing technical issues – Even Google’s web crawlers can encounter dif­fi­culties accessing or in­ter­pret­ing content. Fa­mil­i­ar­ise yourself with common indexing issues and regularly check Google Search Console for crawling errors, indexing problems and other technical issues that could affect your vis­ib­il­ity.

What is Google News Showcase?

Google News Showcase launched in the UK in February 2021, initially involving more than 120 local, regional and national pub­lic­a­tions. Par­ti­cip­at­ing pub­lish­ers included The Financial Times, The In­de­pend­ent, The Telegraph, Evening Standard and Reuters. This gave UK news or­gan­isa­tions an ad­di­tion­al way to present their journ­al­ism to readers through Google News and Discover.

Unlike standard Google News, where al­gorithms select the articles displayed, News Showcase gives pub­lish­ers greater editorial control over how their stories are presented. Readers benefit from more context and a clearer un­der­stand­ing of the news, while pub­lish­ers can increase their vis­ib­il­ity and strengthen their re­la­tion­ship with their audience.

How is Google News Showcase struc­tured?

Unlike standard Google News feeds, which are generated al­gorith­mic­ally, News Showcase allows par­ti­cip­at­ing pub­lish­ers to choose which stories to feature and how to present them. The format uses dedicated panels that editorial teams can curate them­selves. These panels can include selected articles, summaries, key high­lights, images and links to related content.

What are the benefits of Google News Showcase?

Google News Showcase aims to support quality journ­al­ism and strengthen re­la­tion­ships between pub­lish­ers and their readers. Par­ti­cip­at­ing pub­lish­ers can benefit in several ways:

1. Greater vis­ib­il­ity – News Showcase panels can help pub­lish­ers reach new audiences, raise brand awareness and attract more visitors to their websites.
2. More editorial control – Pub­lish­ers can choose which stories to feature and how to present them. This allows them to provide ad­di­tion­al context for complex topics, highlight in­vest­ig­at­ive reporting and showcase their editorial expertise.
3. Stronger sub­scriber re­la­tion­ships – Par­ti­cip­at­ing pub­lish­ers can offer readers free access to selected articles that would normally be behind a paywall. This gives readers a chance to explore premium content before deciding whether to subscribe.
4. Financial com­pens­a­tion – Google pays par­ti­cip­at­ing pub­lish­ers for curating content and, where ap­plic­able, providing access to paywalled articles. Payment terms are agreed in­di­vidu­ally with each pub­lish­ing partner.

Who can publish on News Showcase?

Google News Showcase is not auto­mat­ic­ally available to all pub­lish­ers. Par­ti­cip­a­tion requires a licensing agreement with Google. The programme brings together news or­gan­isa­tions that produce original journ­al­ism, including local, regional and national pub­lish­ers. Unlike standard Google News, pub­lish­ers cannot gain access to News Showcase simply by meeting Google’s general content guidelines.