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!

[naveen12]

@Broaster

Yes, we have AMP implemented on our website without any errors, we have implemented WordPress customize AMP pages, we are not using any plugin for amp.

[Broaster]

Robert Charlton

thanks for the reply, Its always interesting trying to understand how the algos work

people have said a human rater gets the final say and will randomly review websites that get picked by the algo

thats why they say only like two percent of websites get affected by said Algorithm updates, if it was truly a computer doing it then more than 2 percent would suffer, some people are just lucky they haven't been punished yet.

I also noticed in google news there is a few websites that get top stories and they stay up there for 3 days even though someone else releases a fresher update on the story or a new story or break, its strange I honestly believe its a human doing this, they analyzed all the google news websites and said these are credible and these are not but instead of kicking out the lower news sites or smaller publishers they still let them in there, they just dont give them the top stories anymore even if they publish a fresh article

before it used to work randomly I had a site in google news in the 2010 era and Id publish an article and it would be in the in the news in search, I wasn't even a powerful authority I just covered my niche well, and did reports from events, I was happy and thought I could make a living, it wasn't until around 2013 that I no longer ranked for any keyword and no longer appeared in the google top stories

Ever since then I have never been able to recover traffic, still in google news, just dont get any traffic, before even if I wasn't in top stories box Id still get a good amount, I could put up several articles breaking news from events from my reporters well written, and still only get 30 visits.

Its tough and discouraging.

[reblaus]

based on our latest analysis we found that Google News algorithm is now able to identify high quality writing style. This #*$! machine learning stuff is getting really good. In the past we got ranked and traffic with news that was written by low cost offshore writers. Now only the stories written by the my best writers get traffic. It's not a matter of topic, author, etc. its just how the text is written.

The Top Story carousel is though a whole other topic, still no solution for this to get back in.

[Broaster]

reblaus

if that is true how come I see some websites holding the top stories the 3 positions for two days for single keywords many times with few content maybe like 5 to 6 sentences? I also so some spammy article from an EDU website in top stories recently talking about a live stream for a Football game when I searched for a football game that day it was in top stories.

The article was like this
()() Arizona Cardinals vs. LA Rams()() STREAM WATCH LIVE NFL FOOTBALL()()

and it was filled with horrible robot spam and back links to spam streams online.

While Ill have a well written multiple paragraph, cited and informative article that makes it no wear in the top stories

[Broaster]

Something strange happened recently I haven't really checked my articles in google search because I figured they were showing up in regular search when I search title for newly published articles I post.

But I decided to check my articles in google news and none of them are showing up for Title search, but Im still indexed in google news, then I clicked Sort By Date instead of Relevance and the article shows up. so I figured this is a glitch, but its not it seems its an algo penalty it started in August, so is this part of that broad core penalty?

[DrLightman]

@Broaster: But I decided to check my articles in google news and none of them are showing up for Title search, but Im still indexed in google news, then I clicked Sort By Date instead of Relevance and the article shows up. so I figured this is a glitch, but its not it seems its an algo penalty it started in August, so is this part of that broad core penalty?

I'm also facing this issue. But I can't find the control to change the sorting algo to test my case.

From where can I change the sort algo of Google News' search results?

Thanks

[Broaster]

DrLightman they still haven't really resolved it
Some people are calling it shadow banning

[DrLightman]

Broaster, I'm starting to think the same.

[CoachKay]

I have a small site, and I've noticed that sometimes for a couple days at a time new articles appears in top stories, and then for the rest of the month other new articles do not.

It sucks though, because the top stories definitely provides a great boost in traffic on those days.

Seems like "authority" sites always appear in top stories no matter what and google never gives them "days off"..

Kinda sucks for smaller sites who put in a lot of work into SEO. But there's nothing I can do about it. Glad to see that others are experiencing the same issues.

[Broaster]

Coach Kay
do you appear in top stories for single keywords? is your website a niche news site or does it cover general news from entertainment, sports, gossip, politics, etc?

How long have you been in google news?

I rarely get traffic its very weird. And I never have any articles in top stories for single keywords.

I just installed adsense Auto Ads again and I wonder if that can ruin ranking in top stories?

[MayankParmar]

We show up for long keywords in the US only :(

[Broaster]

MayanK how is your site doing in google news now? any update still getting good traffics?

[MayankParmar]

We were getting decent traffic (20-30K a day) from Google News and Discover feed, but after June update the traffic is now zero :(

[topaz]

When you google search (US) your brand name or the tld, do you get the "Latest from yourdomain.com" carousel box ? That's been missing for my site since the June update, along with a 60% drop in google news and discover traffic.

[MayankParmar]

It has disappeared for me as well since the June update.

[EliZha]

See something crazy, go to google news, write in search 'eur/usd' and see the results, most of the pages are 'fxstreet' - i think it's a bug. There are more updated pages, but only on the 2nd page, even they published something update.

[Bortiz]

I have same problems that most of you. Google drop my website (a spanish publisher from Spain) from the google search Top Stories and AMP carousel section.

And as some of you said even in cases when we are the source of the story, 'highly cited' in Google News section, our article don't appear in Top Stories. Once a much smaller publisher that literally copied the text from my site from the beginning to the end appear in Top Stories and not my site.

The thing is when i write in google search my brand name i can see "Latest from xxx.com" carousel box.

[topaz]

@Bortiz, the brand search carousel box works for searches within my country. It's the brand searches from the US that have no carousel box. 60% of my traffic comes from there.

[Bortiz]

Any idea about this problem? Because we keep having this huge problem with Top Stories. This morning we have an interview with the President of Spain and every news site from Spain have spoken about it. The reality is even searching "Pedro Sánchez <snip - my site name>" our article doesn't appear in Top Stories.

It's clear we have lost visibility in Discover, AMP Carousel in mobile and top Stories in Desktop, but in Sistrix everything is ok and the lines don't drop in desktop not in mobile. Any idea?

[edited by: goodroi at 3:14 pm (utc) on Jul 15, 2019]
[edit reason] Welcome to WebmasterWorld, now please go read the forum rules :) [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

but in Sistrix everything is ok

If Sistrix were a major search engine, you'd be in great shape. ;)

[Bortiz]

i know it is just a tool but isn't a bit weird? The thing is i can't found any reason... Any idea?

[Broaster]

Guys I just found this article yesterday but it was published a couple weeks ago, but I have received even less traffic from google news
If you want to know why you could be losing traffic even more or getting none look at the new google news layout, boy they really are trying to wipe out the smaller publisher or independent media.

Yep, Google News Officially Launches New Desktop Results Design
Jul 12, 2019 - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:56 pm (utc) on Jul 24, 2019]
[edit reason] Added article title to posted link [/edit]