Publish your content in Google News on Android, iOS and news.google.com
Do you have a website or blog where you publish new things, either daily or from time to time?
Do you know that you can publish them in Google News?
Recently, when I read one of the articles on 9to5mac noticed, that after their post they got this neat feature.
An option to follow their site through Google News.
It gives them an additional way to get more visitors but also convinces them to stay connected with their content.
My first impression was… I want this as well on one of my websites, so I start exploring how to do that. When I did that, I have been surprised at how relatively easy it was without any extra work from myself. By utilising the website RSS Feed and going through initial configuration and approval (that took approximately 2-3 days) my first site was live and posts were updated when published.
This is another reason to say that RSS is not dead and it still matters.
Here is how I did that and how you can do it as well!
On one of my websites where I am a content moderator we are publishing yummy recipes on a routine basis. We promote them on various social media platforms including Pinterest, that is utilising the RSS feed to push the content there. So in reality, we don’t need to do anything. The website reads our RSS feed and when change is detected publishes the content for us.
I have mentioned Pinterest for one reason. Through the website, RSS posts are published with the utilisation of Recipe Schema to display additional features like ingredients. However, Pinterest is a bit behind in the “right” technology (Schema) to use to get the “right” elements to be displayed. This result that only 1st ingredient is listed there despite that any other site that reads Recipe Schema can do that without an issue. This is why because the main way to get structured data into Pinterest is through h-recipe formats of Schema and not the well-standardised Schema.org. I will need to have a look at that deeper in the future.
Google News is no different, but I want to get as much traction as possible from it.
Of course, I am not expecting a sudden spike in traffic (like we got from Google Discover) but any additional way (the proper way) to reach our audience is always good.
Yummy Recipes UK was my first try to get my existence in Google News. As an example, I decided to add my website and both my feeds, for the Polish and English parts of the website.
Publisher Center
Let’s head to the Google Publisher Center and add our publication.
Firstly we need to create an organisation under which we will add publications.
An organisation is in theory a company responsible for publications and the publications are sources of content that will be displayed. In my example I am my organisation and my Polish part of the website will be one publication and the English one will be the second one.
If you already have created an organisation, as I have for Yummy Recipes UK, you need to remember to create a new one under Manage organisations from the top-right menu.
Creating an organisation is only limited to putting an organisation’s name.
For myself, I created an organisation under the wieckiewicz.org name.
When we got that we will need to add our first publication.
In your publication’s URL I put my website’s main URL https://dariusz.wieckiewicz.org and hit the Add button.
Now we need to fill the gaps in the form where we will specify publication name, in my instance is Dariusz Więckiewicz 🇵🇱, and location.
As you noticed, if you reading from a non-Windows device, my publication name contains a flag emoji to have this unified with my site title. On Windows, it will be displayed as
PL, as Windows still don’t want to play with flag emojis (looks like political correctness rather than anything else).
When that’s done we just need to click the tick box before we will be able to add a publication.
“By ticking this box, you certify that your publication is principally and permanently located in the country that you selected”
The statement is a bit confusing. Yes, my posts on the main website (in Polish) are mainly oriented toward polish readers however they are not “permanently located” in Poland, as polish people are everywhere. The meaning of the location setting is, in the later part of the setup, explained as location of your publication’s headquarters. In my instance, even for the Polish part of the publication, my headquarter is in the United Kingdom and to this law, I am taking greater care to obey this.
Before I start setting up publication, RSS and other options, I will add another one for the English part of my website (https://dariusz.wieckiewicz.org/en/)
This time as a publication name I will specify Dariusz Więckiewicz 🇬🇧 (with a British flag – on Windows it will display as GB) and location, the location of your publication’s headquarters, as the United Kingdom.
Now I can move between publications from the right-top menu.
From the same menu, we will click the cog icon and start customising some of the settings like primary language, in the General tab, according to the language used on the website.
Scrolling down we need to confirm Primary website property URL which I will do by verifying through Google Search Console, by clicking the Verify in Search Console button.
If you got your website added to Google Search Console, this shall be just a one-click exercise.
The last thing that we can do (but not necessarily need to) is to provide a point of contact for your publication in the Contact section (General tab).
Now we can go to Visual styles tab in settings to add your logo for publication.
I will just concentrate on adding the Square logo. This will allow us to easily identify our site when we will be searching for it in Google News.
Square logo should be in PNG file format and at least 512x512 px in dimensions (recommended 1000x1000 px).
For each square logo (as it will be the same for both of my publications) I will customise it with the country flag in the bottom right corner for easy identification.
After you have done changes in each tab remember to hit the blue save button on the right top part of the page.
In such a way, we set the base for our publication. Now we need to add more information regarding the content that we publish and want to appear in Google News.
When we head back to our Publication Center homepage in the Explore products section we will have the information that our Google News product Not started.
Let’s click on that then.
Now we will be configuring our website to display content in Google News.
By clicking the blue edit button we will go through a couple of sections split between three tabs: General, Content settings and Review and publish.
Starting with category, my website fits mostly with Science & Technology. The distribution I leave as it is set by default for worldwide.
Now we can go to the Content settings tab where we will add Sections by clicking the New section button.
Here we got a couple of options.
I will be adding my RSS Feed (Feed) through which my posts will be published.
The Sections part can be used to split the website into different categories and deliver them separately. You may think about how to utilise this feature if you publish a lot. For my purpose, I will just use a single section.
Similarly to how I set my publication, I will fill section title as my website title (with flag-emoji).
In RSS or Atom feed URL I will paste the link to my feed (for PL https://dariusz.wieckiewicz.org/index.xml, for EN https://dariusz.wieckiewicz.org/en/index.xml)
As you start thinking about it, I could utilise a single publication to serve two sections in different languages. If both publications would be in the same language that makes sense, as language is set at the publication level and not the section level. This is why I will finish with two publications and a single section in each of them.
That’s all that we need to do in the Content settings tab.
Its time for Review and publish
In Google News app publishing status we got two things that we need to review, Content and Terms of Service.
As you will see, clicking on the review button will bring you back to the Content settings tab. This is because our RSS feed needs to be refreshed by Google, which is not yet done. In the preview on the right side you will see the message You haven’t added any content to this section yet.
In sections, you will need to hit the refresh button and wait patiently. Typically it is taking a couple of minutes at max to refresh it. When that’s done, you will see a preview of your feed on the right side in the Review and publish tab, like below.
Now we can review the terms of service.
There we need to read the main part and fill out the form on the right.
The name, contact email and your title – I typed Content creator. In the case of organisation is a bit tricky. If we add your own website you can safely state None. I set that when I set it for Yummy Recipes UK, it was approved without any problems.
When that’s done, the last part will be to hit the blue publish button and wait, as our publication will be sent to Google for review (typically it takes up to a week).
When we will head to our Publisher Center homepage we will see that our product – Google News is in review.
Once the review is finished this status will change to live as below for Yummy Recipes UK.
If somebody will start following you through Google News, you will also see that there.
Let’s start following ourselves, even at the stage when our publication is in review.
Heading once again to Review and publish tab we will see the section to test your publication.
Let’s hit the Follow publication button and see how it looks at news.google.com, or through a dedicated app for Android and iOS.
By visiting the Following section we will be able to see our sites in Sources section.
From there we can click on each source and see how our RSS Feed is displayed in Google News as well as share with others.
Under the share button, we will be able to copy the direct link to your publication, which we can use later. But that’s not all.
Search Console
As all is connected with Google Search Console, once your publication is live you will be able to trace impressions and clicks on your publications in the dedicated Google News section, similar as it is for Search results and Discover.
Now let’s add a button to our website.
Website button
Before we start constructing our “button”, that will allow others to start following us in Google News let’s see how the address of our publication is constructed.
Heading to news.google.com following section and clicking on one of our following sources we can use the share button to get a direct link that we need to pass to others.
By clicking the copy link icon there we will get an URL like:
https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMIvhxwswv_zeAw?ceid=GB:en&oc=3
We will make it a bit simpler by removing not needed parameters and it will look like that:
https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMIvhxwswv_zeAw
You can see that CAAqBwgKMIvhxwswv_zeAw is a unique publication identifier and the rest is just a static URL https://news.google.com/publications/. I am mentioning this, as depending on what framework you using, you may want to make it more suitable for use on multiple sites with the same code.
I am using Hugo to build my website, hence in my website layout, I will set the code with a parameter (publication identifier) that will be taken from the config file (hugo.toml).
[params.social]
google_news = "CAAqBwgKMIvhxwswv_zeAw"
google_news_icon = "/svg/google_news.svg"
In a multilingual environment, where each language will have its publication identifier you may want to do the following:
[languages]
[languages.pl]
[languages.pl.Social]
google_news = "CAAqBwgKMOmdyAswmbnfAw"
google_news_icon = "/svg/google_news.svg"
[languages.en]
[languages.en.Social]
google_news = "CAAqBwgKMPSdyAswpLnfAw"
google_news_icon = "/svg/google_news.svg"
Before we start, we need to get the Google News icon in SVG format.
Heading to Google News page in Wikipedia from where we can grab and download Google News icon.svg.
Before I use any SVG downloaded from the internet I like to sanitize it through SVG Sanitizer Test. By opening the SVG file in the code editor (like VS Studio Code) I copy the “dirty SVG” code and after processing paste “clean” from the website and then save the SVG file.
Here is my approach to how I implement an icon in the following section (on top and bottom, in the footer) as well on the recipe page after the content, on Yummy Recipes UK.
The Follow section with inline SVG:
<div class="follow-buttons">
<div class="google-news">
<a title="Follow us on Google News" href="https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMIvhxwswv_zeAw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">
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</svg>
</a>
</div>
</div>
For Hugo with the use of parameters in hugo.toml (previously config.toml) file.
<div class="follow-buttons">
<div class="google-news">
<a title="Follow us on Google News" href="https://news.google.com/publications/{{ .Site.Params.Social.google_news }}" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">
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</g>
<path opacity=".2" fill="#1A237E" d="M4978.2 2828.7v-37.2c0 41.1-33.3 74.4-74.4 74.4H3489.4v37.2h1414.4c41.1.1 74.4-33.2 74.4-74.4zM4903.8 4280.3H3489.4v37.2h1414.4c41.1 0 74.4-33.3 74.4-74.4v-37.2c0 41.1-33.3 74.4-74.4 74.4zM5127.1 3573.1H3489.4v37.2h1637.7c41.1 0 74.4-33.3 74.4-74.4v-37.2c0 41.1-33.3 74.4-74.4 74.4z"></path>
<radialGradient id="a" cx="1476.404" cy="434.236" r="6370.563" gradientUnits="userSpaceOnUse">
<stop offset="0" stop-color="#fff" stop-opacity=".1"></stop>
<stop offset="1" stop-color="#fff" stop-opacity="0"></stop>
</radialGradient>
<path fill="url(#a)" d="M6438.6 1408.1l-1227.7-330.2v-912c0-91.2-75.2-165.9-167.1-165.9H1507c-91.9 0-167.1 74.7-167.1 165.9v908.4L98.9 1526c-80 29.1-119.6 123.8-88 210.5l733.5 2015.4v1440.3c0 92.1 75.4 167.5 167.5 167.5h4727c92.1 0 167.5-75.4 167.5-167.5v-826.9l738.3-2755.2c23.8-89.1-23.9-180-106.1-202z"></path>
</svg>
</a>
</div>
</div>
:root {
--googlenews: #5383ec;
--googlenews-bg: #ecf7ff;
}
.follow-buttons {
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
flex-wrap: nowrap;
justify-content: center;
align-items: baseline;
vertical-align: middle;
}
.follow-buttons {
margin: 0.5rem 0 1rem 0;
}
.follow-buttons > div {
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
}
.follow-buttons > div:hover {
cursor: pointer;
}
.follow-buttons > div svg {
margin: 0 0.4rem;
border-radius: 10px;
}
.follow-buttons > div svg {
height: 1.5rem;
padding: 0.6rem;
}
@media (max-width: 834px) {
.follow-buttons > div svg {
height: 1rem;
padding: 0.6rem;
}
}
.follow-buttons > div.google-news svg {
border: 2px solid var(--googlenews);
}
.follow-buttons > div.google-news:hover svg {
background-color: var(--googlenews-bg);
border: 2px solid var(--googlenews);
}
After content (with SVG in IMG tag):
<div id="google-news">
<div class="google-news">
<a title="Follow Yummy Recipes UK on Google News" href="https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMIvhxwswv_zeAw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">
Follow Yummy Recipes UK on Google News<img src="/svg/google_news.svg" alt="Follow Yummy Recipes UK on Google News" height="24" width="29">
</a>
</div>
</div>
For Hugo with the use of parameters in hugo.toml (previously config.toml) file.
<div id="google-news">
<div class="google-news">
<a title="Follow {{ .Site.Title }} on Google News" href="https://news.google.com/publications/{{ .Site.Params.Social.google_news }}" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">
Follow {{ .Site.Title }} on Google News<img src="{{ .Site.Params.Social.google_news_icon }}" alt="Follow {{ .Site.Title }} on Google News" height="24" width="29">
</a>
</div>
</div>
:root {
--googlenews: #5383ec;
--googlenews-bg: #ecf7ff;
}
#google-news {
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
flex-wrap: nowrap;
justify-content: center;
align-items: baseline;
vertical-align: middle;
padding-bottom: 1rem;
}
#google-news .google-news {
background-color: var(--googlenews-bg);
border: 2px solid var(--googlenews);
border-radius: 4px;
padding: 0.5rem 0.8rem;
}
#google-news .google-news:hover {
border: 2px solid var(--googlenews);
cursor: pointer;
}
#google-news .google-news a {
color: var(--googlenews);
text-decoration: none;
}
#google-news .google-news a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
}
#google-news .google-news img {
vertical-align:middle;
display: inline;
height: 1.5rem;
width: auto;
margin: 0 0 0 0.5rem;
}
@media (max-width: 834px) {
#google-news .google-news {
font-size: 0.8rem;
padding: 0.5rem 0.6rem;
}
#google-news .google-news img {
height: 1.25rem;
}
}
This is just my implementation. Feel free to adjust it to your needs.
Review and Rejection
Even though I set Yummy Recipes UK as a first, and it got approved without any issues, the grass is not always green.
Even if you set up everything correctly and think your site is highly valuable for users, your publication can still be rejected.
This happens to both of my publications. My English part of the website has been rejected once and my Polish part three times before it was finally approved.
In the first instance, I have been advised that through my articles I am serving redirection links. In the second instance, through redirection links, I am redirecting users to a no-news website, followed by information that my site contains promotional content (twice).
In all these situations, it was total nonsense. I am not serving any affiliate links and links through my posts are just references to other sites. I removed all ads from my website years ago.
Each time I have been advised that my redirection links/promotional content are against Google News content policy. But you know what? In Google News content policy there is no word about that. I read it fully and all the rejections are invalid in my opinion so I decided to complain.
On one of my posts I link to John Mueller’s website (a guy from Google), hence saying that I am serving a redirection link to that particular site was a bit stupid.
I even asked John about that on Mastodon. Though John is not involved directly with Google News he serves a good insight stating “some automation gets confused by the links to my site”.
I decided to complain on the Publisher Center Help community to see if I can get some clarification on the rules.
Overall I see that Google rely heavily on automation and the automation is wrong in some instances, like mine.
After the initial rejection of my English publication feed and complaints on the publisher centre, where a Google employee took this further my publication was finally accepted and live.
As we see, automation is in many cases done through machine learning and has no real human review until it’s required. That happens here this is why my publication was eventually approved.
My Polish publication has been rejected three times and after discussion and helpful intervention from a Google employee, after two weeks all my feeds are live on Google News.
Through that issue I noticed, that if you add the publication to Google News, which is written in a non-English language, during review it’s translated into English (as seen on the screenshots provided from the rejection emails). This probably is confusing machines and links are mangled and mistaken for redirection/promotion.
Be patient during the review process.
Each time my publication was rejected, I resubmit without making any changes. I followed up on my conversation on the publishers’ discussion. With Google support, all have been approved.
Advice for you. If it’s not approved initially, don’t give up, try again and use available tools of communication.
Good luck!
