How to submit your site to Google News

Google News is a smart news app that organizes what’s happening in the world to help you learn more about the stories that matter to you. These stories that you see on Google news don’t just appear there like that, they are made available for you to read by website owners and if you are a website owner, it’s pretty clear that you would love to learn how to make your site appear on Google News especially when you are a small website owner.

There are two things which you will benefit from adding getting your site on Google news, they are;

• Free traffic; and
• More revenue.

Previously in one of our articles, I showed many website owners how they can add their blogs on Opera Newsfeed with most of them laying complaints that getting on Opera News was difficult as their emails were not being responded to. You can learn more from this article – How to add your website or blog to Opera Mini news feed.

To make your site appear on Google News, all you need to do is to submit your site to Google News Publisher centre and you should be done. Gone are the days when publishers needed to submit their site to be eligible for the Google News app and website you don’t need to sign up through the Publisher Center to be in Google News rankings, but signing up through the Publisher Center does provide certain benefits:

• Content and branding control: Design, brand, and customize your publication’s sections and content in Google News.
• Monetization opportunity: Run ads inside your content area in the app. Google News supports ad serving via Google Ad Manager, including premium solution ads. Publishers can use paywalls in Newsstand through Subscribe with Google.
• Placement eligibility: Publications with business terms are eligible to be in the Newsstand section of the app (in applicable countries/regions). We do not guarantee placement. Publications are independently selected for Newsstand by our merchandising team based on promotional timing, quality of user experience, and relevance to the promotional themes.

You might be wondering why everything’s a little bit different now, the reason is that this year, Google launched a new Publisher Center that combines the features from the former Publisher Center and the Producer tool to create one single publisher interface.

You can use the Publisher Center tool to share your content with Google News by submitting RSS feeds, website URLs, or videos.

Even if you don’t set up a publication in the Publisher Center, Google may find your site through our normal web crawl. If you do not want to surface in Google News, you can block access to content on your sites without affecting your continued indexing and ranking in Google Search.

If you had an edition through the Producer tool or were part of Google News through the previous Publisher Center tool, your content will remain live. You should continue to update your content preferences in the new Publisher Center and stop reading this article but if you are new to this kindly continue.

How to submit your site to Google News Publisher Center

I’ll have to let you know that the procedure going to be taken for you to get your site listed on Google News is quite lengthy and if you don’t have the time to go thoroughly go through the whole article, you can quickly see this video that clearly explains all the necessary procedure that is to be taken to successfully get your site to appear on Google News. Here’s the video.

A publication lets you manage how your content is viewed by users in Google News. With a publication, you can:

• Import your existing content
• Manage access
• Make design decisions
• Optimize how your content is rendered and delivered to users

To create a publication in the Publisher Center, go to publishercenter.google.com on your device or computer, add your site’s information under the “General” tab. Look at the left-hand side of your screen and under Home, click + Add Publication. A pop-up will appear asking for a Publication Name, type in the desired name for your publication and click Save. After clicking Save, your publication will be created, it is time to fill in the required details.

Submit your general information

Add your publication’s basic information

• Add a description: Users can use the text you provide in your description to search for your publication in Google News. Make sure your publication description is at least 140 characters.
• Select a category: When you set up your publication, be sure to classify it appropriately so that readers can find it under the correct category in Google News.

• Choose a primary language: Select the primary language of your publication, and whether you’d like to turn on automatic translation to allow readers to view your content in their preferred language. Note that automatic translation is enabled by default. For best results, encode your site in UTF-8.

Tips

1. Avoid articles that display more than one language within the text of the article. Google News’ system can have trouble crawling content that contains multiple languages.
2. Not all languages are supported across all devices. To check which languages are available on Android devices, tap App  Settings  Languages and regions of interest.

Add a website property URL

The website property is usually your site’s domain, but can also be a sub-domain or a URL prefix property, such as:

• A URL with the specified prefix and protocol (https://qualytech.net)
• A domain property with all subdomains and multiple protocols (example.com).

You can only create one publication per website property. Make sure to verify your domain in the Search Console.

Location

You can include the location of your publication’s headquarters. If you need to change this location in the future, please contact the Google team here.

Contacts

List your publication’s points of contact, their active email addresses, and the topics they should be contacted for. For example, technical issues or updates. A verification link will be sent to the email addresses provided.

Distribution

By default, your publication is available to readers worldwide. If you’d like to restrict access, you can either allow or block specific countries from reading.

Important: Any changes to your international distribution settings are effective immediately.

You can also allow your content to appear on either all or only specific Google properties, such as Chromecast, Google Play, and Google Assistant.

Tracking your feed content

To monitor traffic to your feed content, connect your publication to a Google Analytics account or add a tracking pixel URL.

Submit your content

The Publisher Center lets you submit and manage different types of content. There are two main categories:

• Section: A section organizes content under the same topic on the app, such as “Latest,” “Business,” “Sports,” “Politics,” “Arts & Culture,” “Fashion.” You can create sections using RSS feeds, web locations, or YouTube channels/playlists as content sources.
• Content label: A content label is a section of your site where you post news articles. Our crawler can visit this page to discover new articles. You can add labels to help Google understand the type of content that’s found on your site. Submitting Content labels does not guarantee your content will appear in Google News.

Important: Individual URLs do not apply to specific sections or crawl paths.

Add images

You can add your logos in the Google News Publisher Center to brand, customize the user experience, and represent your publication in Google News. To upload your logo, your image must follow the requirements below:

• Format: PNG (recommended), JPEG.
• Dimensions: 1000×1000 px (recommended), 800×800 px (minimum).

Tip: We recommend you use icons with solid colours, and without rounded corners or unnecessary gradients and effects. We also suggest leaving the background transparent instead of white.

To upload an image file:

1. Sign in to Google News Publisher Center.
2. Select your publication.
3. Go to the “Images” tab.
4. To upload your file, click the Add square logo.
5. In the top right corner, click Save.

To change an existing square logo, click the Update square logo. Then, you can upload your file and save your
changes.

Add a rectangle logo that displays your content in Google News. If available, provide versions for light and dark modes. To upload your square logo, your image must follow the requirements below:

• Text: Include your publication’s full name, and make sure the text is legible regardless of the image size.
• Format: Upload in PNG.
• Height: 400 px (recommended), 200 px (minimum).
• Max height/width ratio: 1:10. For example, If the height is 200 px, the width can’t be more than 2000 px.

Padding:

• • If the image text has ascenders and no descenders, add padding below the image to match.
  • If it has descenders and no ascenders, add padding above the image to match.
  • If it has both, make sure the top and bottom margins from the midline of the text are equal.

To upload an image file:

1. Sign in to Google News Publisher Center.
2. Select your publication.
3. Go to the “Images” tab.
4. Upload your image:
   • To upload a light mode file, click Add Light mode wide logo.
   • To upload a dark mode file, click Add Dark mode wide logo.
5. In the top right corner, click Save.

Tip: To modify an existing wide logo, click Update light mode wide logo or Update dark mode wide logo. Then, you can upload your file and save your changes.

Review and publish your content

Google News allows users to review their publication’s content before they publish it. You can review your content under the “Review & Publish” tab. If your publication has any issues, they’ll appear under the “Identified issues” section.

Important: You won’t be able to submit your publication until any identified issues are resolved.

Submit your publication

To submit your publication to Google News, you must resolve your publication’s identified issues. If it’s the first time you publish, Google News takes 2–4 weeks to review your content. If you’ve published content before, your changes will publish automatically.

Publication status

To receive notifications about your publication’s approval, make sure your contacts are accurate. Depending on your publication’s content type, the review process can take 2–4 days. If your publication has any issues, you’ll be notified via the “Contacts” listed in your publication. Once approved and published, your publication will be marked as “Live” in the Publisher Center tool. This status only reflects the status of your Sections.

If your publication has any issues, use the following steps:

To resubmit your publication for review, your publication should be set to “Draft status.”

1. Open the Publisher Center.
2. Select your publication.
3. Resolve the identified issues in the notification.
4. In the navigation menu, click Review and Publish.
5. Under “Publishing status,” click Resubmit for review.
6. To submit your publication for review, click Submit.

That’s practically all that you need to know about including your site on Google News. Unlike Opera News, you will get a response from Google on whether your site has been approved or not within the stipulated period.

Life after getting your site approved on Google News

To view your content in the News tab of Google Search, run a site: Search [site:qualytech.net] on the News tab of Google Search.

Use the site operator “site:yoursite.com” to verify that content from your domain is being indexed by Google. Without the operator, content from your domain may not appear if there is similar but more relevant content.

Articles for you or suggested articles are the suggestions based on your recent web and app activity. Google uses several factors when determining how news articles are ranked. Google News algorithms use a variety of signals to surface the most useful and relevant news content prioritizing signals that indicate freshness, originality, and general newsworthiness. 

Please keep in mind that our news index is compiled by computer algorithms. While Google strives to include as much of your content as possible, it can’t guarantee that it will show every single article.