GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: If you're a news publisher, your website has probably evolved and changed over time—just like your stories. But in the past, when you made changes to the structure of your site, we might not have discovered your new content. That meant a lost opportunity for your readers, and for you. 

Unless you regularly checked Webmaster Tools, you might not even have realized that your new content wasn't showing up in Google News. To prevent this from happening, we are letting you make changes to our record of your news site using the just launched Google News Publisher Center.

With the Publisher Center, your potential readers can be more informed about the articles they're clicking on and you benefit from better discovery and classification of your news content. After verifying ownership of your site using Google Webmaster Tools, you can use the Publisher Center to directly make the following changes:

Update your news site details, including changing your site name and labeling your publication with any relevant source labels (for example, "Blog", "Satire" or "Opinion")

Update your section URLs when you change your site structure (for example, when you add a new section such as https://example.com/2014commonwealthgames or https://example.com/elections2014)

Label your sections with a specific topic (for example, "Technology" or "Politics")

Whenever you make changes to your site, we'd recommend also checking our record of it in the Publisher Center and updating it if necessary.

The benefits of getting listed on Google News

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: Instant distribution to the masses: With close to 600M visits per month, Google News opens up your publication to a significant portion of the internet. Google automatically displays News stories for appropriate searches, so it’s one of the best ways to get your publication noticed.

• It’s free: Just sign up, add your publication, and start linking content to your page.
• Gain authority and brand recognition: As a respected, curated news tool, Google News has a reputation for only presenting what’s absolutely relevant, timely, and authoritative. Finding your way into this circle of authority drives brand recognition and convinces readers to trust your content.
• Double the effectiveness of your organic search: Google News serves as an entirely separate entity from whatever work you put in for organic search results. Therefore, you’re creating an environment where content shows up more often, giving it two chances to end up at the top of the rankings.
• Land at the top of Google: News results usually end up at the very top of the search results, or somewhere within the first few lines, frequently making them more effective than advertising.
• Link-building on overdrive: Landing a high-ranking article on Google News generates a situation where other news sources attribute that information to your publication. As such, they link to your website, cutting out the need to reach out for link building. And if you end up with a popular article, it may create hundreds, or thousands, of backlinks, boosting your overall SEO in the process.

How to publish on Google New Publisher Center

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: To create a publication on Google News Publisher is one thing; it’s an entirely different story getting shown in the results. Here are the steps to make an account and improve your chances of ranking in Google News:

• Make sure you have a suitable publication
• Complete all Google technical requirements
• Create a publication on Google News Publisher
• Now it’s time to create an account on Google News Publisher.

Step 1: Sign up for Google Publisher and add your first publication

• GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: Go to the Google Publisher Center homepage and either create a Google account or log in with your current one.
• You’ll see a big blank white space at first, with just a few tools to the left for getting started.
• Click on the Add Publication button.
• The first step in how to publish on Google News Publisher Center

Fill in the

• Publication name
• Primary website property
• Location
• Check the box that shows your publication is permanently located in the country specified.
• Click Add Publication.

Step 2: Edit the publication settings

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: Before submitting to Google News, it’s important to fill in settings for your publication. To do so, click Publication Settings next to your new publication listed in the dashboard.

Mark the primary language of your publication, then fill in anything you missed from the setup, like the publication name or location.

Add additional property URLs and points of contact for your publication. Remember, points of contact create trust between you and the reader, and apparently Google wants that too. Click Next to proceed.

Step 3: Add visual styles

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: This sends you to the Visual Styles page, where you can upload visual elements that appear when users view your content on Google News.

• Add a square logo that shows next to indexed articles.
• Upload a light themed rectangular logo for viewing on lighter interfaces.
• Upload a dark theme rectangular logo for users who have darker interfaces on their devices.
• You can also upload fonts that you utilize in your publication.
• Choose the Save button when you’re done.

Step 4: Design your Google News publication and submit for review

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: After all that, go back to the main page and click the Google News button. This is where you configure every aspect of the publication that appears on Google News. Click Edit.

Add basic information like:

• A detailed description of your publication.
• A category in which your publication falls under (like Sports or World News).
• Also add specific distribution limits if necessary, along with Google Properties to allow from your verification in Google Search Console. Click Next.
• Add all the sections within your news publication. Anything that’s broken up by a unique URL and section title on your website, like Sports, Cooking, Travel, or World News
• You can add sections by Feed, Web Location, Video, or Personalized Feed.
• Remember that Feeds require an RSS URL, not just the URL to the page.
• Set the section title, along with who can view. Click Add.
• Click on Next.

This final page offers a preview of your Google News feed to the right. Click through the “Review” links on the left side to ensure you address any issues and review the terms of service. Once all that is done, you can click Publish!

SHOULD ALL BRANDS USE GOOGLE PUBLISHER CENTER?

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: While it might not seem obvious, Google News could prove to be a valuable channel for a diverse range of brands, not just traditional news outlets.

In November, Conde Nast told Digiday that about 20% of incoming traffic came from Google Discover. Yes, media brands should wholeheartedly embrace Google News to capture new audiences.

But those platforms that occupy a more “traditional” space shouldn’t be afraid of new tools for telling stories. Look at this example from the AMP website; each news outlet used the AMP Stories format in a completely different way.

There are plenty of ways to format your Stories for Google News using AMP

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: Brands offering subscription-based content stand to see some powerful results. In this study featured on the Google blog, Mexico-based publisher, Grupo Reforma increased conversions by 43% using Google Subscribe.

I’d recommend checking out the Data Maturity Benchmark tool.

It’s a collaboration between Google and Deloitte designed to help publishers better understand their data and use those insights to drive subscriptions, engage audiences, and drive revenue.

HOW DO YOU TRACK YOUR PERFORMANCE?

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: According to Google, there are a couple of ways that publishers can track content performance, either inside the Google Publisher Center or inside your Google Analytics account with the rest of your traffic.

Here’s what you need to know about each method:

1. Use Google Publisher Center for Content Submitted via Feed

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: For content uploaded via RSS feed, you can track your performance using either the news.google.com or news.url.google.com referrers.

Inside your Publisher account, you can also set up tracking to learn more about how readers using native Android and iOS apps interact with your content.

Per Google, it’s important that you do not connect both the feed analytics numbers from the Publisher Center AND the referrers. Both options measure the same behaviors, which means one tiny mistake could spoil the entire data set.

2. Use Google Analytics to Track Web-Crawled Content

GOOGLE NEWS PUBLISHER CENTER: For content uploaded using content labels or pulled directly from your site, Google News items appear next to all other traffic sources.

In this case, you’ll want to look at the HTTP referrer, which will either look like this (app): “news.google.com” or this (browser): “news.url.google.com.”

To track Google News performance in Google Analytics, you’ll need to connect your publication with your Google Analytics property.

Open the publisher center and select the publication you’d like to track.

Navigate to the General tab, then the Tracking section.

Enter your Analytics tracking ID and your Analytics tracking ID for AMP.

Once you’ve synced your accounts, you’ll be able to track the following actions via Google Analytics:

• Times an article was read
• Ad views
• Bookmarked articles
• Section views
• Interactions on common screens—Search, Explore, Read Now.
• To access your data, sign in to your analytics account, and select Behavior from the menu.

You’ll then choose one of three navigation reports: Screens, Events/publisher, or App navigation.