Getting Your Website Included in Google's News Feed

Google’s News feed is a great way to earn visibility for your content and position your company website as one of the top sits in the industry. As many know, newsfeeds found on any major search engine is one of the first things a user might see before moving on to a new page. The content found on newsfeeds typically comes from major news sites—The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC News, etc.—but this isn’t always the case. Google has a way of filtering out the great news content on the web, so if you’re a new news-centered website, you still have a chance to earn a few spaces on that newsfeed.

5 Things to Remember if You Want Your Website on the Google News Feed

Although getting some of your content on the newsfeed isn’t easy (and probably won’t be too frequently at first), even just a few pieces per year will earn you some great visibility and credibility. Below explains the things Google looks for when finding content for their newsfeed and how you can make it happen:

1. Technical Perspective. Your site architecture has to be technically sound if you want Google to find and consider your site. A few of the technical considerations include news URLs only and the layout and format must be easy for their crawler. However, you can read a very detailed and straightforward write-up from Google itself here.
2. Content Perspective. As you can imagine, this is the most important point when it comes time to decide whether or not your site should be included. The four major content considerations include:

-       It must be news content.

-       Sites must have authority and show this by including strong writing and readership through social shares, external references and links, etc.

-       Perfect grammar and completely original content.

-       Ideally an author with authority in the industry as well (discussed in the next step).

1. Authorship Thoughts. Google cares about the author just as much as the publisher (in some cases more). Even if you’re not a very well known news site just yet, you can earn a spot on Google’s newsfeed if you have an author who is very well known and authoritative. An author can gain what is called “author rank” by earning articles and links on authoritative websites. In other words, if you featured an author who has been cited on CNN and The Wall Street Journal, then you will get Google’s attention. It’s also important to note that Google wants all author’s to be very accessible, which means they have contact information and a photo attached to the article.
2. Frequency Considerations. News sites publish content everyday because news is happening everyday, so this is important to keep in mind. If you’re only publishing something once per week, you might be throwing up a red flag without even realizing it. Always make sure you’re publishing quality, but try to post everyday (posting more than once per day also works great!).
3. File for Inclusion. After you’ve made sure your website is following all of the above criteria, you will actually be able to file for inclusion into Google’s News Feed. In other words, you don’t have to just wait around and hope that Google finds you. Visit this link and then be prepared to wait several weeks before you get an answer from a Google employee.

In the end, it never hurts to try and become more visible on every Google platform, and the Google News Feed is one of them. It’s certainly not easy and it often takes a long time and a lot of attempts to “get in” with Google, but with control of 67 percent of the search market, it’s always worth a try.

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