Yesterday, I was first to release a story regarding a critical software update. Normally, I get picked up by Google News whenever I post a story (not counting static html posts). I had posted the news regarding the release hours before any of my competitors, yet they were picked up by Google News. I still haven't seen Google pick up the story. I've made some modifications to my site in the past week weeks which adds a lot of javascript in my code. Outside of that, the site is the same. No major changes. Any insight?
You need to recommend a source. Your URL's need to be unique and "google news friendly". If they accept you, they normally pick up your stories at a good clip.
Thanks for this info. One follow iup question. Do they notify you if the site is accepted, or do you just wait to see results? Also can you point me to an example of a "google news friendly" site? Thanks.
Yes they will let you know.. Content is very important. My main site got accepted, but my newer site did not. Here's a snippet from a Google news email regarding unique URL's: Thank you for your inquiry regarding inclusion in Google News. We apologize for our delayed response. After some investigation, we've found that our system cannot crawl your articles because multiple articles are displayed on the same page. Google News is compiled solely by computer algorithms and articles are gathered by crawling news websites. In order to correctly gather articles, pages that display an article's full text need to have a unique URL. We cannot include sites in Google News that display multiple articles at the same URL. An example of a site that we are able to crawl successfully is http://english.chosun.com Please let us know if you have any additional questions. We strive to include as many news sources as possible in Google News and would be happy to work with you to include your site in the future if you are able to change to a unique URL-naming scheme.
I think I may have solved my issue. I had removed a link to my RSS feeds on the site. Just added them back, so we'll see if Google loves me again. Since I just looked for info on how to add to Google News, I tried to add my second site again. I last tried in February, so it's time again. Fingers crossed. Good luck.
I can imagine your disappointment. Google News is one of my attractors for visitors, and if I publish something, I get upset if I'm not picked up quickly. In the past, the only time some of my things don't get picked up by Google is when the news item contains a lot of tables. Although sometimes on rare occurances, my articles won't be picked up for about eight hours. Most of the time, it's picked up within 30 minutes. Let us know if your idea worked.
sorry to be jumping in, but in order to use Google News, it must be 'newsworthy'? like a press release?
The story came from the company and it was regarding a critical software upgrade. Odd, today I noticed an article from my site that was missing from Google News. It was there yesterday. I've seen lots of crap in Google News. Even some of my stories get picked up that aren't very newsworthy. I sent them an email to inquire. Fixing the RSS feeds didn't seem to do the trick.
Hi cmeinck thanks for your posts very informative... when google says "a unique URL." does a querystring parameter qualify as a unique url? eg. http://xxx.xxxx.com/news/sports/story.aspx?uid=10000001 eg. http://xxx.xxxx.com/news/sports/story.aspx?uid=10000002 are the above examples unique or does it need to be like the following? eg. http://xxx.xxxx.com/news/sports/10000001.aspx eg. http://xxx.xxxx.com/news/sports/10000002.aspx