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Google Finally Bringing Changes to Help Publishers ‘Find Their Sites’

[ Back to News Page ] Dated: 07-Nov-2018

Publishers have been complaining for months about missing sites or news not showing up in Google News and now the company responds and we expect new and good news. Google still wouldn’t say what exactly was changing.

We have confirmation from Google that they will be making changes to Google News helping publishers find their sites and articles in Google News. If you ever had an issue with lost sites and articles in Google News, this will of great for you.

Google’s very own Lisa Wang confirmed this in the help forum and was probably the biggest sigh of relief publishers have been waiting for. All the complaints from publishers about their content gone missing in Google News for relevant queries might now be finally heard. Of course you would only feel this if you had been a victim of missing content.

This Google News Issue also got confirmed with Lisa’s statement “We are working on an update which should help resolve some of the issues that publishers have raised around finding their sites or particular articles in Google News”. Wang also added that this new update and solution should be ready in a few weeks and will come in the shape of a new update at that time that it is.

However, even when asked by authentic people and companies, there was no update or clarification coming from Google at all. Experts asked them whether there is an indexing bug having a specific format of news publishers that upset chances of ranking in Google News? Another question was about a ranking bug having a particular niche of websites in Google News? And yet another one asked if there was a bug with Google News averting only some of the publishers from not showing in Google News?

To all these questions, Google never provided a relevant answer and the whole thing might still be up in the air.

There also doesn’t seem to be a distinctive pattern among sites that are experiencing this problem and have complained about it. Random sites seem to lose Google News visibility. Multiple CMS (Content Management Systems) are being used by publishers to write on different diverse topics and just random ones seem to wander off with no pattern at all. There is also not a specific category of news that drops off even now and then. There also seems to be no correlation for publishers to make their opinion on as to why this is happening.

Why it matters you ask? Publishers more often than not consider Google News to be a traffic deriver. When your content fails to show in Google News, it will diversely have negative upshots especially for publishers that engage in monitoring their traffic constantly with advertising. Google is expected to provide publishers and update when the update actually rolls out. Still there is no word on Google Messaging to include any specifics, we will however keep an eye out for this and will update you as soon as a new development hits.