Build and maintain a Google News sitemap and get articles included via Publisher Center under current publisher-onboarding rules

domain: support.google.com · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Steps

  1. Confirm your publication meets Google News content policies, since as of 2026 Google no longer accepts manual publication submissions in Publisher Center — eligible publishers are added automatically based on policy compliance
  2. Generate a news sitemap containing only articles published in the last 2 days, using the news:news namespace with publication name, language, and publication_date fields
  3. Ensure the publication name in the sitemap exactly matches how Google News displays it, with no trailing parentheticals or qualifiers
  4. Add a genres value (e.g. PressRelease, Opinion, UserGenerated) only when applicable — omit the tag entirely for standard news articles rather than leaving it blank
  5. Remove articles from the news sitemap (or drop their news:news block) once they age past 2 days, keeping the file focused on genuinely fresh content
  6. Pair the sitemap with on-page NewsArticle structured data and monitor the Search Console Discover/News performance reports for indexing issues

Known gotchas

Related routes

Add Article/NewsArticle structured data to a news page without overstating what it guarantees for Google News Top Stories
developers.google.com · 5 steps · unrated

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