I’ve also confirmed my articles are showing up under my publication which can be found listed as a source when you search for ValueAddedResource in Google News.
However, none of my articles individually appear in Google news if you search for general keywords that should pull them up.
So, what am I missing? Is this just an SEO thing where my articles are not ranking or being considered for News inclusion for some reason or is there a technical issue or other step in the process I’ve missed along the line that would be preventing them from being included?
Would love to hear from anyone who has successfully set up a Ghost blog to be getting consistent inclusion in Google News feeds.
I had to do a double-take to make sure I hadn’t written this post… same situation for me. I launched in late September so it’s been more than five months.
I have taken this up with lots of people, including Google News directly. What it boils down to (they have told me) - is that the lack of exposure is due to the site being “so new.” I’ve posted more than 200 stories and get major exposure in Google Search itself… but somehow Google News is still suppressing my stories.
Like you, I appear as a news source, but no search results in the stories being shown in news surfaces. This is doubly frustrating because many of my stories are scoops that other outlets then pick up - and they are the ones that appear in Google News.
Doesn’t seem fair but I have not been able to get any redress. They just say there is “no guarantee” of appearing and that it’s because the site is “so new.” I would love to hear if you find a solution or get a different answer…
Thanks for responding - it helps to know at least I’m not just crazy.
Early on I suspected, like you’ve been told, my site was just too new or it just takes time etc. But my site will be 2 years old at the end of this month and I’ve published over 1,100 articles in that time. While not everything is a “hit”, I do pretty well in regular Google Search - right now I’m averaging ~50K visits/month and that’s mostly just organic search traffic.
I understand there is no guarantee and not every article may be included, but to get absolutely zero exposure just doesn’t make sense to me, especially when I’m writing highly relevant, helpful and unique content for my niche.
Totally understand the frustration about scoops as well. There are two main sites I keep an eye on as my closest “competitors” and even though I regularly beat them to stories, they get the exposure because they are in Google News.
I know they both use WordPress and I believe are very likely using the Yoast plugin to submit their articles to News. I really like Ghost and don’t want to switch to WordPress, but have found myself considering it specifically because of this issue.
There has to be a way to crack this code. If there are any developers or SEO experts here willing to tackle the project, please feel free to message me with a scope of work and possible costs.
Obviously I’m not the only one looking for a solution here. I believe if someone created a “Yoast-like” plugin for Ghost that could reliably get articles picked up in News, there would be a market for it.
Oh man. That is not great news. Two years in and it seems like you would have made the cut. I’ve heard various things about Google News sort of shutting out “new” sites … And I know Apple News says it’s not accepting new applications. It’s just weird to me that these places that claim to feature you as long as your news is relevant, timely and authoritative – actually seem to be using different criteria. I don’t know if it’s a Ghost thing or would also affect other new sites. I may try to ask LION - but I’ve been asking around for months and no one I’ve asked has been able to provide any definitive context …
It’s disappointing this is such a black box. Like you said, at this point I don’t even know if it’s a Ghost thing or if it would apply to any “new” site, which is the other reason I’m reluctant to switch to WordPress to try to “fix” it - there’s no guarantee it would and it could just be coincidence that the other sites I see who are getting Google News placement use WP with Yoast (those sites are 6+ years old, so could be “grandfathered in” from a time when it was easier to get included?)
I’d feel better about it if I had even just one example of a Ghost site that is regularly getting placement in News but I haven’t found any yet.
I will see if LION is able to give me any information about new sites that have launched in recent years so we can determine if those sites are having similar issues. It seems like most folks in LION are on WP/Newspack. It does also seem to me that Ghost should be able to help us connect with other news sites that have launched in recent years (or perhaps just point us toward them) - to the extent they exist - to see what is happening with them.
@Berkeley_Scanner - some possibly good news? Still trying to track down exactly where these came from because I don’t find these articles when searching on Google News but…according to Plausible analytics I’ve had 2 visits from Google News today.
Not quite ready to celebrate just yet but at least maybe that confirms there isn’t any general technical reason a Ghost blog couldn’t be indexed or included in Google News…now just have to figure out where these clicks came from and why I’m not seeing those articles (or any others) when I search in Google News.
For anyone tracking this issue or who may come upon it later, my daily news site finally showed up in Google News about 15 months after launch. I paid a programmer to improve various back-end SEO stuff that may have helped, along with other improvements (including adding cookie and privacy policies); and I was also able to connect with Google News directly, which may or may not have helped. Anyway, it may have just been that I needed to wait 15 months and it would have happened anyway. From talking to other news publishers, many of them have found this to be the case in recent years (and Google News does not seem to care).
Generally speaking, he helped me with a few E-E-A-T things (e.g. adding privacy and cookie policies); cleaning up my header and building out my footer; and setting up structured data (NewsMediaOrganization Schema, NewsArticle Schema, FAQPage Schema) — which was a big thing I wanted changed.
I encountered a similar issue with my blog, where the sitemap was not functioning correctly. Despite ensuring that my blog’s sitemap contained posts in the proper format, I continually encountered an “Empty Section” error when submitting to Google News.
I ended up developing a custom solution using a RSS Feed template and a new route on routes.yaml, I sucessfully replicated on Ghost the structure of the Google News RSS generated by a Wordpress Plugin (GN Publisher)
I think submitting a feed is no longer mandatory for appearing in Google News. Google’s crawlers can discover your content on their own through their regular web indexing process.
My main site does not use a Google News sitemap or feed and is indexed instantly.
My new site also doesn’t use a feed. While currently indexed by Google News, it still needs to establish the authority required to be displayed in news results. This takes time, as Berkeley pointed out.
This applies to any platform, so it’s not a Ghost issue.
Feeds do have some advantages but are not essential.
Exactly right. My stories don’t always appear in Google News but they did this week. It did take a while to start appearing. I just checked my Google News settings and confirmed that I have no special feed URL at all, only https://my-local-news-website.com/
