Google News and Discover Are Different Beasts
Getting into Google News and Google Discover are two separate challenges. Google News is for time-sensitive news reporting. Google Discover is a personalized content feed based on user interests. The optimization strategies differ significantly.
Google News Inclusion
Technical Requirements
- News sitemap: Include only articles published in the last 48 hours. Update every 10-15 minutes.
- Article structured data: Include datePublished, dateModified, author, and publisher.
- Clear publication dates: Visible on the page, not just in metadata.
- Unique URLs per article with stable structure.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/tech/article-title</loc>
<news:news>
<news:publication>
<news:name>Publication Name</news:name>
<news:language>en</news:language>
</news:publication>
<news:publication_date>2026-03-15T14:30:00Z</news:publication_date>
<news:title>Article Title Here</news:title>
</news:news>
</url>
</urlset>Content Requirements
Google News prioritizes original reporting over aggregation. Timeliness matters enormously — being among the first 5-10 outlets to publish correlates strongly with visibility. Author bylines with real names are practically required.
Google Discover Optimization
What Gets Into Discover
- High-quality images: Min 1200px wide. Discover is visually driven.
- Engaging titles: More like social media headlines than search-optimized titles.
- Topic authority: Sites that consistently publish quality content about a specific topic.
- E-E-A-T signals: Author expertise, site reputation, content quality.
Discover Traffic Characteristics
Discover traffic is spiky and unpredictable. An article might get zero traffic for a week, then 20,000 visits in a day. Engagement rates tend to be lower than search traffic, and conversion rates are typically 50-70% below.
Publishing Frequency
For Google News, frequency matters — multiple original articles per day gives an advantage. For Discover, consistency and quality matter more than volume.
Measuring News SEO Performance
GSC has separate performance reports for News and Discover. Check them separately — they have different patterns and optimization strategies.