Ways to succeed in Google News

Thursday, January 17, 2019

With the New Year now underway, we’d like to offer some best practices and advice we hope will
lead publishers to more success within Google News in 2019.

General advice

There is a lot of helpful information to consider within the
Google News Publisher Help Center.
Be sure to have read the material in this area, in particular the
content
and
technical
guidelines.

Headlines and dates

• Present clear headlines:
  Google News looks at a variety of signals to determine the headline of an article, including
  within your HTML title tag and for the most prominent text on the page.
  Review our headline tips.
• Provide accurate times and dates:
  Google News tries to determine the time and date to display for an article in a variety of
  ways. You can help ensure we get it right by using the following methods:
  • Show one clear date and time: As per our
    date guidelines,
    show a clear, visible date and time between the headline and the article text. Prevent other
    dates from appearing on the page whenever possible, such as for related stories.
  • Use structured data:
    Use the datePublished and dateModified
    schema and use the correct time zone designator for
    AMP or
    non-AMP pages.
• Avoid artificially freshening stories:
  If an article has been substantially changed, it can make sense to give it a fresh date and
  time. However, don’t artificially freshen a story without adding significant information or
  some other compelling reason for the freshening. Also, do not create a very slightly updated
  story from one previously published, then delete the old story and redirect to the new one.
  That’s against our
  article URLs
  guidelines.

Duplicate content

Google News seeks to reward independent, original journalistic content by giving credit to the
originating publisher, as both users and publishers would prefer. This means we try not to allow
duplicate content—which includes scraped, rewritten, or republished material—to perform better than
the original content. In line with this, these are guidelines publishers should follow:

• Block scraped content:
  Scraping commonly refers to
  taking material from another site, often on an automated basis. Sites that scrape content must
  block
  scraped content from Google News.

• Block rewritten content:
  Rewriting refers to taking material from another site, then rewriting that material so that it
  is not identical. Sites that rewrite content in a way that provides no substantial or clear
  added value must
  block
  that rewritten content from Google News. This includes, but is not limited to, rewrites that
  make only very slight changes or those that make many word replacements but still keep the
  original article’s overall meaning.

• Block or consider canonical for republished content:
  Republishing refers to when a publisher has permission from another publisher or author to
  republish an original work, such as material from wire services or in partnership with other
  publications.

  Publishers that allow others to republish content can help ensure that their original versions
  perform better in Google News by asking those republishing to
  block
  or make use of
  canonical.

  Google News also encourages those that republish material to consider proactively
  blocking
  such content or making use of the
  canonical,
  so that we can better identify the original content and credit it appropriately.

• Avoid duplicate content:
  If you operate a network of news sites that share content, the advice above about republishing
  is applicable to your network. Select what you consider to be the original article and consider
  blocking duplicates
  or making use of the
  canonical
  to point to the original.

Transparency

• Be transparent:
  Visitors to your site want to trust and understand who publishes it and information about those
  who have written articles. That’s why our
  content guidelines
  stress that content should have posts with clear bylines, information about authors, and
  contact information for the publication.
• Don’t be deceptive:
  Our content policies
  do not allow sites or accounts that impersonate any person or organization, or that
  misrepresent or conceal their ownership or primary purpose. We do not allow sites or accounts
  that engage in coordinated activity to mislead users. This includes, but isn’t limited to,
  sites or accounts that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or that direct content
  at users in another country under false premises.

More tips

• Avoid taking part in link schemes:
  Don’t participate in link schemes, which can include
  large-scale article marketing programs
  or selling links that pass PageRank. Review our page on
  link schemes for more information.
• Use structured data for rich presentation:
  Both those using AMP and non-AMP
  pages can make use of
  structured data
  to optimize your content for rich results or carousel-like presentations.
• Protect your users and their data: Consider securing every page of your
  website with HTTPS to protect the integrity and confidentiality of the data users exchange on
  your site. You can find more useful tips in our
  best practices on how to implement HTTPS.

Here’s to a great 2019!

We hope these tips help publishers succeed in Google News over the coming year. For those who
have more questions about Google News, we are unable to do one-to-one support. However, we do
monitor our
Google News Publisher Forum
—which has been newly-revamped—and try to provide guidance on questions that might
help a number of publishers all at once. The forum is also a great resource where publishers share
tips and advice with each other.

Posted by Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison for Search