Google News is an element of Google Universal Search. Universal Search essential refers to the amalgamation of many different types of results e.g. video, news, places listings and products into the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Universal Search has been in operation in the SERPs since 2007 and since then webmasters have been constantly on the lookout for more and more innovative ways to apply strategies that will results in increased exposure in the one box universal results. The main benefit to featuring in these results is that, for example, a news items that features in the SERPs will likely receive a far higher click through rate than a news items that features only in Google News.
Gaining Google News Compliance can often be a bit of a challenge, particularly for companies whose focus is mainly concentrated on small business SEO. Nonetheless, the benefits to be had from featuring in Google News are vast – imagine featuring on the first page of results for some of the biggest generic terms in your industry and you will get the idea. While Google News traffic is far less likely to convert into sales than standard organic traffic, it can still provide a tangible benefit in terms of getting more links and visibility for your site.
One of the main things you need to do to get into Google News is feature a three digit URL in the URLs of your news content. In order to feature you also need to have in the region of about a 3 months backlog of content i.e. you need to be adding content to your site for 3 months prior to submitting a request for inclusion. Google also requests that you add a “meet the writers” page to your site and there should be at least three people contributing new content to your website. It’s important when creating news content to avoid using opinion – you should only ever report events as they happen and avoid any self promotion through the news section of your website. The news should also be broadly relevant to the overall theme of your website and you should publish at least two news items each day or rather 40 news items per month to be considered for inclusion.
