In part 1 of How to Get into Google News, we explained exactly how to meet all the technical requirements and went of the basics of everything else. We also saw some of the benefits and how you can use your membership in Google News to boost your traffic and revenue. But, now it is time to learn about the other requirements that you need to fulfill in order to be accepted. It is time to finish answering the question on how to get into Google news.
Show Some Personality And Good Character
Your website will be reviewed by real people and not just by some robots. You should have a strong and clearly visible About Us page that really stands out and shows the history of your website. If it has been around for several years then there is a lot to write about. If you have awards you won or have been nominated for then make sure you clearly state that your are proud of that as it will give you more authority in the eyes of the review team.
Please note that sites that are not at least 6 months old should not even bother applying and that those that do get into Google News are a few years of age on average. Still, it never hurts to apply.
The Page For Your Authors
Huffington Post makes sure they list all their authors and staff, but this format, for example, would not be viewed as the best one in the eyes of the Google staff. A much better example is the job the Chicago Tribune did on their editors page. So as you can see, including the names and emails of the writers is a great step. If you can include some physical telephone numbers then that would also be great. If you have a small number of writers then you can even include their photo and a few words about them. It will make you (and them) look very professional and raise your chances of getting into Google News.
Original Content
It is expected of your writers to produce high quality content that is original (unique) and you can use tools such as CopyScape to check on your writers from time to time to make sure they are not perhaps abusing your trust. You can also use the tool to find competition that may be using your articles without linking back to you.
Good Design and SEO
Just as they would review you if you were applying for an AdSense account, the Google News team will look at your website as a whole. A bad design can cost you a lot of money that you could have earned if you got accepted but didn’t because of some of the following factors that make a design bad:
- Free templates.
- HTML and CSS which is not validated. Use the free validator to check your pages.
- Adobe Flash. Often used for banners and is sometimes acceptable, but try not to overdue it.
Make sure you are already well ranked on Google and have a solid number of daily visitors and subscribed readers. You should also consider social media integration to boost your sites traffic.
Did you compete everything from the checklist in part 1? Well, then it is time to apply for Google News! If you get rejected do not worry it happens all the time. You will be able to apply again after some time. Use that time to think about what you did wrong and fix it.
Hi Charlie,
Thanks, I really appreciate your post. At the end of November, I submitted my blog to Google News for inclusion, but it got rejected after a week for quality reasons (which they weren’t so clear on).
Anyways, I would really love to know what I did wrong, so I can fix it and re-apply hopefully in the first quarter of 2013. If you could have a look at my site (linked in my name), and tell me how I could improve, it’d be so great!
Thanks a lot in advance,
Oh…my website is new so i cant apply…
My site http://thedripple.com has been rejected again. It was accepted in October 2012 and then removed from the index within a week. and now after two months again, I’ve applied and got rejected.
I’ve revised all the Guidelines, I don’t find there’s any issue.
My site have About Page, Every Author’s Contact Information, Contact Us Page, TOS, Privacy Page. Also we do write more than 10 news a day.
Can you please review my site and tell me what should I improve to get it again!
A few thoughts, though not implying these are the reason for the rejection as Google simply may not need any more gaming sites in their network.
– You may want to expand your staff. Google likes to see you have the capacity to produce real content by real people.
– Your main article content is primarily just a blurb followed by the actual content from another source. Google prefers quality content.
– You cannot insert a full article from another source into your article. A small blockquote is fine, but entire articles add no value.
I would guess it has to do with the content being submitted. If it has been on the web already, and is simply regurgitating the same thing, Google doesn’t care for that much.
All the best.
Hi Isaac,
Definitely your site a¡ha problem with authors. Most of the authors of the articles is “admin”. It should be instead the name of a real person.
I have submitted successfully many sites to Google news, but I have one site that Google News has rejected already 4 times. I have no idea where the problem is. The site is http://www.theseasidegazette.com/
Any suggestions? I feel totally lost.
Cheers
Luca
Luca – there are many reasons a site gets rejected from Google News. For one, your articles may not be what they are looking for on their network. This is one of the most common reasons.
Another reason could be that you do not have a formal staff / team page. Google News would like to see that you have an editor, and various staff members all contributing frequently. This assures them you will still be producing news a year or two from today.
Another reason could be that your articles are very short. Take for example the article written on April 3 (carchuna-calahona-medieval-fair/). That is a total of 94 words. Unfortunately, that doesn’t suffice as a news article, especially when it’s sourced from another news source.
Finally, GN wants your own news, not news from elsewhere. After all, it’s possible the source is already a GN network member.
Hope that helps.
April 11, 2014—To the author, Charlie Patel, thank you for Part 1 and the above Part 2. Very valuable information. I came across the 2 articles because I was curious as to why (to my perception, at least), “google news” now seems to be aggregating so much “garbage news” or “info-tainment news” (as compared to say, 3 or 4 years back).
I fully understand that one can “customize” the news items, and also set up alerts keyed to certain words or phrases.
But the vast majority of internet surfers basically click on whatever is displayed in front of them, and so, placement — choice of news item, choice of which content-provider to highlight — is paramount (and is why there are now all kinds of for-profit SEO businesses). And “google” must know this better than anybody in the whole world.
And so google news placement — “The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program” — is a disclaimer without meaning, except to those who are easily fooled. Put another way…
-Just WHAT is going on with google news?
-What is going on with the “news sites” they are selecting (many of which are in no way “news sites” and much more like blogs disguising opinion as “news” and “fact”)?
-What in the world are they putting into their supposedly “objective” news seleciton algorithm?
-How in the world are they selecting sites to be part of “google news” (see above: thinly-disguised blogs pretending to be “news sites”)?
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Thanks for the tips . Btw i have seen these days google accepting nely made websites with hardly 15-20 pages.