Google News Publisher Center Can Help You Get Discovered

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google news publisher center

Recently, Google announced a new publishing platform called the Google News Publisher Center to help those who run news sites better communicate with Google and get their content (and any changes they make) involved in Google News.

In the past you had to alert Google every time you make a change to the structure of your site. So the new tools aim to prevent this from happening by allowing publishers to make changes through this new tool. In other words, you get to make changes to Google’s record of your site.

According to the official announcement, there are three main things you can do with the Google News Publisher Center:

  • Update your news site details. This includes changing your site name as well as labeling your publication with a source label such as Blog or Opinion.
  • Update your section URLs. You do this when you change your site structure, such as when you add a new section to your site.
  • Label your sections. Use labels such as Politics or Technology to help your better classify your pages to Google.

The tool also makes it easy to make changes to any existing information Google has on file about your site. To get the most out of the Google News Publisher Center, you should check that they have your site’s current section URL in their system, check that there are relevant section labels applies, and finally that your source information is correct.

Getting Started with the Google News Publisher Center

All you need to do to get started is visit this link and follow the instructions.

Your news site has to be verified with Google Webmaster Tools and already a part of Google News in order for you to use the tool. If you’re all setup, you should see these verified sites in the Publisher Center as soon as you click the link above to get started. If you’re not verified, simply click the “verify site” button to go through the verification process. This is shown in the screenshot below:

google news publisher center

If your site is verified and you see your site on the tool, you have the option to choose Details or Sections for that website. The Details section will allow you to edit your news source, as shown below in a screenshot from Search Engine Roundtable:

google news publisher center

If you click Sections, you of course get to see what section Google is placing your news site in as well as the option to add a section if you think it should be categorized somewhere else. Below is another screenshot example:

google news publisher center

The tool is currently only available to publishers in the U.S., but Google does plan to add more features and then roll it out to other countries. Also check out the News Publisher Help Center page for more information and troubleshooting.

News Photo via Shutterstock, Images via SEORoundTable


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4 Reactions
  1. It’s about time that something like this came up. So many people are sending their content to press release sites just to have them indexed on Google News. Doing this directly will save everyone the hassle and time.

  2. Google had blogs categorized in the news section in the past. How will blogs be listed in the future?

  3. I really like this idea. Unfortunately, I don’t see how small sites have a chance. I think the tool is cool, but you can only use it if you are part of Google News which is impossible for most small sites.