What’s new in Google News – with Barry Adams

As the 20th birthday of Google News approaches, Google released a new version of Google News last week. Barry Adams, the news SEO expert sheds light on the new look of Google News in this post. What exactly are the changes and what does this mean for publishers, readers and SEO? As a bonus, you’ll get some tips to increase your chances of getting in Google News!

We also discussed this and more with Barry during Tuesday’s SEO News Webinar. Watch it again or sign up for next webinar with Areej AbuAli!

What has changed in Google News?

Google News has a new look. Or more precisely, news.google.com got a new design. Google described the change as follows:

Our new look Google News on the desktop was inspired by feedback we received from readers. We’ve made it easier for you to keep up with the most important news by displaying top news, local news and personalized picks at the top of the page.

Brand Bender & Olivia Ma – Google

The redesigned Google News home page now looks like this on desktop:

Let’s briefly highlight the three aspects mentioned by Google: top news, local news and personalized selections.

The best stories

The best stories they show the most important news of the moment. With the current design, they appear at the top of the Google News home page on desktop. They usually show major news headlines. One of these articles is most prominently featured; below this article you can see two options (usually also from big publishers).

Good to know: When Google detects that someone has entered a news-oriented search query into the search bar, it can also display The best stories in regular search results on desktop or mobile in the form of a card.

Local news

You will now find yours in the upper right Local news. Google says it added this selection here due to customer feedback. It contains the main news of the areas you are located in or of interest to you. Use the manage button on the local tab to set the locations you want to monitor. For Local news you need to sign in to your Google account for it to work properly. Otherwise, it will show you more general A choice for you instead of local news.

Personalized selections

Finally, Google News lets you select and organize the categories of news you want to follow. It offers big categories like business, technology and entertainment. If you click the customize button next to Your topics, you can choose topics that interest you. Google will then show you the top three stories of that category. You can also change the order of the topics so that the most important to you are at the top.

In addition, Google News has improved fact-checking features and more ways to learn more about the news provider with About this result. So what effects will these changes have? Is it just a new look or does it include more? And what does this mean for publishers?

What does this overhaul mean for news SEO?

We asked an SEO expert for the news Barry Adams of Polemic Digital on their experience with the news.google.com redesign:

“I really like the new design of Google News. It puts more emphasis on local news and personalized news feeds. The old design was a bit funny, but eventually you got used to it. It’s not particularly modern, so it needed updating. It was also a bit difficult to read the news from the publications in the area where we live. So Google managed to successfully put that front and center with the redesign, so good job on that.”

News SEO is more than news.google.com

“However, most people who engage with news on the Google ecosystem never visit the news.google.com subdomain. Most people use regular search to find news. If you look at the analytics of any news publication, you will notice that only a fraction of the clicks come from the news.google.com domain. If you look a little closer, you can see that a large amount of clicks come from regular search results. Not the Google News tab, not the news.google.com domain, but the Top Stories box and related news results.”

“The latest statistics I read are that between 10% and 12% of all Google searches have a news box in some form. And that’s where most news publishers will get most of their organic traffic from Google. While the redesign and new features are nice, most of the news optimization work still goes into getting publishers of those Top Stories boxes.”

So how do you get there?

“For news SEO to work, you have to take it seriously. Be a news broadcaster. To rank in Google News, you need a separate website with very little commercial content. Only post newsworthy content, and post a lot – consistently. Let the journalists write the stories. Do this consistently on a highly optimized site and you’ll start seeing results in about two years. Yes, SEO for news is hard work.”

News SEO tips

So how do you optimize for Google News? In addition to creating a lot of newsworthy content written by journalists, as Barry says, here are some concrete tips to increase your chances of getting on Google News.

Google Publish Center and News Guidelines

You will need to configure your own Google Publisher Center account to manage your presence in Google News. But first, you’ll need to make sure you follow Google’s general rules Guidelines for webmasters and Policies specific to Google News. There are several technical requirements and quality guidelines in these guidelines; most of these are achieved using WordPress; assuming you’re using a standard theme, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Technical requirements

• Google News city map; a Google News sitemap is “optional but recommended,” according to Google’s documentation. Help, our SEO plugin for news automatically creates this for you.
• Optimized feed formats; Google digests news content from feed formats (such as RSS/Atom), so our News SEO plugin does the hard work of structuring and formatting the feeds that WordPress already creates.

Editorial and quality requirements

There are also a few other things you’ll need to do to improve your chances of your site ranking in Google News. Most are focused on showing you’re a real publisher and working with actual journalists:

• A contact page a list of contact details such as your address, telephone numbers and/or email addresses. A contact form alone will not help. Google wants to make sure you’re a legitimate news organization, so make sure your website shows you as such.
• A page listing all members of your editorial staff. It’s probably wise to make this a list of author profiles and make sure your author profiles are rich.
• Suitable images: Google reads when deciding which image to use for your article schema.org image tags and og:image tags automatically generated by our core Yoast SEO plugin.
• Usage NewsArticle and Author scheme: Usage properly structured data for your news content helps Google better understand your topics – and the journalists who wrote the articles.

For ending

SEO news it’s a different beast than “regular” SEO. As a new publisher, it’s hard to get into the top news and you may have to work hard for years before Google even recognizes you as a trusted source. Your website must be technically sound and Google must be able to quickly crawl your content. You must use it correctly NewsArticle structured data and publish high quality original news content. Fortunately, we have a News SEO WordPress plugin for Yoast SEO which takes care of the technical stuff of SEO news so you can focus on publishing that fantastic content.