Our site in Google News, but not showing in Top Stories

[MayankParmar]

Hey,

Our site is in Google News since March, 2017 and earlier this month, we enabled AMP, with 60% AMP pages already indexed.

Since we run a news site, it needs to be in Top Stories to get the clicks. Even in some cases when we are the source of the story, 'highly cited' in Google News section, our article don't appear in Top Stories, while the sites who sourced us/copied from us appear in Top Stories! Even the articles with 100 words appear in Top Stories, while my 400+ words articles are nowhere to be seen.

What should I do to get the Top Stories? :)

Thank you!

[chms]

The same for me, they copy my article and shows his content in "Top Stories", my article in first position after "top stories". This is incredible.

[aristotle]

Do those other sites at the top have more trust and authority?

[chms]

In my case not, in fact we ask for a link to our original content and they put it, nothing to do, they continue apearing in "Top stories"

[MayankParmar]

Yes. They have 20-30% better DA, PA than me, according to Moz.

[Robert Charlton]

They have 20-30% better DA, PA than me, according to Moz.

DA and PA are Moz-proprietary metrics that really have little to do with how Google looks at sites.

See this discussion on the topic of third party metrics here...

The Problem with Independent Authority Metrics and Google SEO
Oct 2015
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4775434.htm [webmasterworld.com]

That said, if these sites are older and better established than you are, you're going to have a hard time beating them in the news field. Track record in news reporting is important.

[Robert Charlton]

Re Top Stories...

To prevent copy theft, I would use something like PubSubHubBub to "claim" first publication when it's yours. I'm not a news publisher myself, and I assume that there are others on the forum more qualified than I to describe the process.

Note that "original" content is not simply a question of unique wording. You really need to come up with many stories yourself, and or put substantial original input and analysis into them. How your article may fit into a group of other stories on the same topic is also likely to be important. In some cases, freshness is likely to be a factor.

Here are Google's news ranking guidelines...

News Help - Ranking
[support.google.com...]

The introduction describes the ranking factors Google looks at... IMO not too different from what Google seeks for all the content it ranks highly, but with the important difference that news stories are sequential, albeit they don't necessarily unfold in sequential order. News also may be more competitive, in that if a major news service beats you to a specific aspect of a story, it's very likely that they're going to rank above you....

In general, Google News aims to promote original journalism, as well as to expose users to diverse perspectives. There are no human editors selecting stories or deciding which ones deserve top placement. Ranking in Google News is determined based on a number of factors, including:

- freshness of content
- diversity of content
- rich textual content
- originality of content

In addition to these guidelines, there are some technical factors that could affect the ranking of your site in Google News. These factors include other relevant sites linking to your site and descriptive and accurate <title> and <alt> tags in your articles' code....

[deviants]

I'm encountering a similar issue, with the main exception being that my site had appeared (and ranked very prominently) in all iterations of top stories: the carousel, the text listing, the "top stories" listing with images, etc.

Until about October 2017, when my site stopped appearing. Nothing changed on the server side - we were and still are mobile-first, AMP-compatible, etc.

The "experts" on the official Google support forum maintain that "Top Stories" is completely separate from Google News, so your inclusion there apparently has no bearing on Top Stories. This does appear to be true -- I see an entertainment site that isn't in Google News appear in Top Stories quite frequently. You'll also see videos and other non-news media content appear in Top Stories from time to time.

While I completely understand that Google would want to *prioritize* big, established, universally regarded sites in the Top Stories section, what's weird is that Google doesn't even seem to be creating "cards" for my site.

If you search Google for CNN or Entertainment Weekly, you'll see "Top Stories From ..." with cards from their site. If you search mine, you just get the traditional Google search results -- no "top stories" or dynamic content displays. It really leads me to believe that my site would never, ever be considered for Top Story placement anymore.

The original poster may want to check that on his site.

And I'm hoping someone here may be able to shed light on what would cause Google to seemingly completely eliminate an established, Google News-indexed site from *ever* appearing in Top Stories. I can't imagine it's a coding issue - I'm AMP compatible, using Structured Data, etc - but I'd frankly love to hear that than find out I'm blacklisted for some external reason.

[aristotle]

Perhaps a site needs a higher level of trust and authority to qualify for "Top Stories" than to qualify for the regular Google News results.

Google has been working for a long time to try to find ways to measure trust and authority algorithmically. But they've had a lot of difficulties with it.

[engine]

We want to let you know that we are aware of reports surrounding the removal of websites from Google News in recent days. We're actively monitoring posts here in the forum and reports from elsewhere. Our team is currently investigating, and we'll provide a more detailed update as soon as possible.


In the meantime, thanks for your patience, and know that we are doing all we can to quickly address your feedback.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/news/l-FQyspiXXM

Mod's note: To see thread in Google Product Forums, please copy and paste above link into address bar. Hashtags in urls break WebmasterWorld redirect script.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:41 am (utc) on Jan 10, 2018]
[edit reason] Delinked Google Product Links so they can be copied. [/edit]

[Future]

@Robert Charlton when everything fails on fresh content on Google, this is where FB and other social media sites comes into picture..

Someone big from Digital Media in India (paying huuge on Ads) did a small expirement.
Bought a similar matching domain name (counting ***** as keyword) and ranked top on all SM sites) when a major issue occured closing entire State.

Being there for appropriate time, started ranking top on SERPS = Google.. (but not in news)

Years of work (goes for a toss)..

[aristotle]

when everything fails on fresh content on Google, this is where FB and other social media sites comes into picture..

Google has consistently done a better job against attempts at outside manipulation of what it shows to the public than have facebook and twitter. This is good work by google, not bad as you imply

[reblaus]

Let's try to figure this out. Our news site is over 15 years old and as previous posters noted, we stopped seeing our news posts in Top Stories starting in October, just ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season. To be featured in Top Stories does not require to be listed in Google News, that is for sure. We see many sites in our segment that are not in google news, but still get placed in Top stories for competitive keywords.

As previously noted, searching for our site name does not include Top Stories in the result page. So Google stopped generating Top Story listings for our site completely. The big question is why? What are the trigger points for Google to place a post in Top Stories?

What we also noticed that our stories are also not featured as often in the carousels on mobile as often compared to before October.

Our news stories rank top inside of Google News, are fresher than the competition, but they get all the traffic as they are in Top Stories. Nobody searches intentionally inside of Google News. Even if our story ranks #1 organically, outdated Top stories are placed on top.

What we noticed ist that Google shows days old stories in Top Stories and completely ignores fresher relevant content. In many cases this is really a bad user experience as the top results for searches are totally stale. I hope that this bad user experience will trigger an algorithm change eventually.

[Broaster]

Ive been in google news since 2010 and stopped seeing my articles in top stories or in the news back in 2013 that was the last time I ever had an article for a singe keyword appear in the news or top storys

[MayankParmar]

I'm on Top Stories now. All I did was to generate more articles without any big time gap between the posts, and wrote some exclusive articles to get cited by publications like The Verge, Gizmodo etc.

[Broaster]

MayankParmar

how did you get the Verge and Gizmodo to cite and link to your articles?

I only post like 4 articles a week because my writers only submit once and a while, I heard article frequency is important but how do you time your articles?

thanks in advance

[MayankParmar]

how did you get the Verge and Gizmodo to cite and link to your articles?

I posted an exclusive story with a statement from a company. As it was a article worthy, every authority site cited me :)

Oh, I've never seen a site non-news site (not updated daily) in Top Stories, maybe you need write more ;)

[Broaster]

MayanK

it takes me hours to write an article well written. My website has been in google news since 2010. you said you got approved in 2017 was your website new or was it old, if it was new how did you get approved so fast a lot of people are reject from google news.

I just rely on a few bloggers who submit their articles but they only submit like one article a week.

I used to be able to post only a handful of articles a week and still get top stories, Its good to see you made it in the top stories again

Also is AMP worth it? I use a wordpress but I have no clue how to make my website AMP even some of the plug in are confusing Im just a blogger not a tech code guy

Its probably why I have such hard time with this.

[christianoliveiraseo]

Are there any news about what happened in October 2017 regarding Top Stories?

As others mentioned, since that month one site I am now working with stopped appearing on the Top Stories box. They have been on Google News for a couple of years, everything seems fine technically (AMP, News Sitemap, etc.), articles get indexed on Google News pretty quickly, content is original and unique, etc.

From October 2017 they are not appearing on the Top Stories box for any search related to the news they publish. They do appear inside the "News" tab on Google, but they saw a concerning decrease in traffic since they do not appear on the Top Stories box.

They publish daily (10-20 articles per day) and it's a site about videogames in Spanish.

[reblaus]

I could not find anything, but can confirm that our site also stopped being in top stories around that time. Just ahead of the crucial Holiday shopping season.

We have now tried everything on the technical side. New AMP based mobile site, site speed etc, but no change. We know we have a too few links from other sites on your daily news reports. The link back culture almost vanished and getting links got extremely difficult.

[MayankParmar]

whenever there's a G update, I'm out of top stories. Will be back only after 2-3 months.

[RedBar]

Just ahead of the crucial Holiday shopping season.

What and when is that, Easter?

Easter's a crucial holiday shopping season?

[tangor]

Bear in mind that "news" these days is a touchy subject for any of the tech companies and that crackdowns have been implemented (FB, YT, G, in particular) and "trusted" means more than any of the other "news" sources.

It is possible to get caught in one of their filters as "not trusted" and that's the end of game. No transparency, so one can't know why things don't work as they used to, only that they do not work the same way.

[Broaster]

christianoliveiraseo

Ive been in google news since 2010, I cover a niche, I used to get my articles for single key words on the In The News section and if you get your article in that you are going to make good money, google news has a separate algorithm apparently its humans who pick and choose which websites deserve top stories, not a computer, thats what I heard.

Last time I was in in the news or top stories was in 2012 after that never again.

Ill put up several articles and get like 20 cents a day now pathetic for all the work I sacrifice and put in, I used to make an average of 35 dollars a day from my website in google news now the past two years I made a grand total of 200 dollars.

Being in Top Stories helps, if you get an article in the top stories for a single popular keyword you will get massive traffic.

I remember when I first got into google news almost every article would appear In the news box, and my website would crash from all the traffic coming in I had to upgrade the server.

[tangor]

If I read that right, your upgrade was 2010, and such upgrade you've expensed since... so was it worth it?

News, these days, is not for the faint of heart or the pie in the sky hopeful. It won't work any longer.

G and FB are under the gun to correct their evil ways, and soon, else gov will get involved.

One can hope for the best, or one can find another niche...

[Broaster]

when you are speaking about upgrade what do you mean?

[Broaster]

So a few of my writers went to some events in the valley to cover, I was able to put up at least 5 articles a day for 7 days, then checked my adsense account and it said 1 dollar.

I checked google news and my articles are indexed by only show up when I click sort by date

It isnt article quality either, because I noticed a news website had some weird spammy article with no coherent sentences it was basically a bot who joined their website and posted some streaming video with no proper title or paragraphs yet their article popped up in top stories and they ranked for a single keyword, I dont have any of those spam crap articles

only thing I can think is a human reviewer reviewed my website and didn't think it was an authority and removed it from the top stories rotation so doesn't appear in top stories.

its basically hopeless, no traffic from google news anymore

I dont know if its a technical issue on my wordpress because I use those seo checkers and it says my website is seo friendly,

Google news drives traffic but not for me, sucks. I barely had 24 visitors from google search according to my jetpack tracker.

Its hard to stay motivated and putting in hours a day when no money is coming in

The only traffic I get is when I post a link to my websites facebook page and ill maybe get like 50 visits from facebook

[naveen12]

< moved from another location >


Hi All,

I am facing this issues since last year, we are one of the big publisher in india. Starting Our website and AMP article was found in the Google Search Top Stories section, but after December 2017, google drop our website from the google search top story and amp carousel section.

Anyone here facing with this type of issue?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:07 pm (utc) on Jul 25, 2018]
[edit reason] Moved post to this discussion [/edit]

[Broaster]

naveen

its most likely a human rater marked you as not deserving, google had human raters who will randomly every day review a website and determine if they look nice to viewers or not or credible and they punish you by not letting you in the top stories.

How often do you write articles and how many do you post a day, india stuff is a very competitive niche many of the spammers came from India so google is very selective about what indian website they put from what I read on the google help forums.

You said you have an AMP are you using wordpres website and plug in for that?

[Robert Charlton]

google had human raters who will randomly every day review a website and determine if they look nice to viewers or not or credible and they punish you by not letting you in the top stories

Broaster... This is not how Google uses human raters in regular organic search, and I'm suspecting it may not be how Google uses human raters in News, but I'm not sure about that.

In regular organic search, human raters look at sites to improve the quality of search algorithms being tested....

Rough and sloppy description... their ratings really compare the perceived quality of large groups of sites that have been ranked by different algorithms, comparing one set of results to another. It's a blind test, with too many random sites included for any specific site to be affected individuallly.

It's the algorithms that are being evaluated... not the individual sites rankings. Eventually, of course, sites with factors common to results sets that do less well than others might get winnowed down. Eg, if there were an algo that was testing sites including some with upside-down text, after a while those results sets might negatively affect algos which allowed those sites often enough to cause those algos, and thus those sites, to drop down or fall out of rankings.

Again, I don't know how it's handled in News, but I'm sure it's not a one on one choice.