Google announced it would begin Google News’ automated publication pages in March. The update came after the company said it would stop publishers from adding publications manually in April 2024.
Google Publisher Center recap
Google News provides publications about what’s happening worldwide using its and third-party publishers’ content, including articles and videos.
Google explains what you can use its Publisher Centre for:
- “Publisher Center is an interface that helps publishers submit and manage their content in Google News, as well as configure monetization solutions through Reader Revenue Manager.”
Google’s announcement that News will stop manual publications in March means that Google will use its systems to choose which articles to display.
Automatically Generated Publications
Google announced the change in April 2024 and has been transitioning to automatically generated publication pages since then. The transition will be completed this March, meaning Google will remove the manual option publishers have used since the launch of Google News in 2019.
Google wrote about the transition on its Publisher Centre help page:
- “Following our announcement in April 2024 last year, Google News will fully transition to automatically generated publication pages in March. This change improves our existing publisher workflow and simplifies our current product experience.”
“Moving forward, all publication pages in Google News will be generated automatically. As a result, publication pages that had been created by publishers manually will no longer appear to users in Google News. Publisher Center will discontinue customization features for publication pages in Google News, and the Google News tile will no longer appear in Publisher Center.”
No change to content eligibility
Google said the update does not change the content eligibility requirements for appearing in Google News and the tech giant’s other news outlets.
Google confirmed this when it wrote:
- “This doesn’t change what content is eligible to appear in Google News and other news surfaces. Content from publishers that adheres to our content policies is automatically eligible for consideration in Google News and across news surfaces.”
Adding, its systems would now choose what content is eligible based on several factors:
- “Our systems automatically identify and rank eligible content based on factors like relevance, prominence, authoritativeness, freshness, location, and language. Learn more about ranking within Google News and how news works on Google.”
Adding to the confusion
Barry Shwartz from Search Engine Land wrote in July 2021 about the difficulties of applying to be on Google News and, more recently, about the confusion Google’s latest update may cause:
- “I expect this change to cause more frustration and confusion amongst publishers. As you know, the whole Google News inclusion process, which was once a clear and straight forward process, is now automated and very unclear and completely not transparent.”
Google says it’s implementing the change to simplify its “current product experience.”
Here’s what Google wrote:
- “This change improves our existing publisher’s workflow and simplifies our current product experience.”
It remains to be seen whether the Google News automated publication pages update will make it easier or more difficult for publishers to include their content.
