Why Google News is Important for Google Discover

Nowadays, everybody wants to get traffic from Google Discover. It is almost like a cheat code: do anything in your capacity to ‘unlock’ Google Discover, and your website will receive thousands of traffic overnight.

Wait! Isn’t Google Discover something that involves plain luck?

Sometimes it is, but if you watch closely, some patterns are observed among articles featured on Google Discover. I have listed these already; read Google Discover ranking factors.

Google News approval and compliance with Google News content policy are some of the big, big factors in increasing your site’s exposure on Google Discover.

Google News itself Will Not Give You a Lot of Pageviews

Now, hold up. It’s not like you try getting Google News approval for your website and suddenly start getting traffic from Google News the next day!

Google News is a playground for big boys, your region’s elite newspapers and publishers. They get tons and tons of traffic from Google News. You can also get there, but in the future, not now.

Yeah, you may also get very little traffic from it, and that will be enough to see the Google News tab on your search console, but that means nothing. It only means your site has received some traffic from Google News, very little, maybe only 1-10.

So, please give up your expectation that Google News will surge your website’s traffic overnight and make you a millionaire. That’s not how it works.

Google News’ only benefit: Super fast indexing

What Google News does, though, and the only thing that matters to me, is that it helps your new (and NEWS) content get indexed on Google within a matter of minutes, even seconds!

Now, why is instant indexing so much important?

Open Google Discover, and what you see is mostly sensational news. Now, News is a very, very competitive space.

Example: “Lionel Messi wins another Ballon D’ Or”.

• All the giant newspapers are going after the same news simultaneously.
• The one that publishes it sooner than the others wins by a mile!
• When people search for the news, the first article is already available in the Top Stories/News section. The first publisher now ‘owns’ the news.
• Others will give them backlinks.
• Google will always give it a better ranking because it was by far the most original content on the web, and others merely copied and rewrote it.
• That’s why publishing new NEWS earlier than others is very important in Journalism.

But here is a catch. It must also be indexed on Google. Without indexing, publishing is meaningless.

So, let’s rephrase the rule: The publisher who gets to index the news on Google first wins!

How do we index them so fast? Google News approval is the answer.

The publisher publishes the news. It gets indexed instantly. By then, people started to search for the news on Google. The first published article is already there in the Top Stories/News section (thanks to fast indexing), and people instantly mass-click it, read it, share it, and voila, that article is now on Google Discover.

Without indexing and initial clicks, the article will never reach Google Discover.

How do I get Google News approval?

Go to https://publishercenter.google.com/ and sign up. There are many videos and guides available.

I have a few things to add.

• Your website should have all important pages: About page, Privacy policy, Contact page, Terms of Service, Disclaimer, Cookie Policy, News fact-checking Policy, to name a few.
• The website should be Adsense-approved for Google News approval. Google has no business giving you access to its giant content distribution platform without any monetary benefits.
• Use a good news theme, and if possible, use Google AMP for approval. You can remove them later.
• News is a sensitive topic. You must disclose your name, the company’s name, and the reporters’ name and credentials to ensure Google News trusts your website.
• All news articles should clearly state who the author is behind the article. Use an author plugin for WordPress.
• Use the GN Publisher: Google News Compatible RSS Feeds plugin, and when you submit the RSS feeds to Google News as told in the above video, use RSS feeds from this plugin only.

• You have to make two banners of 500×50 pixels with your Website name on them, using Canva. as I use here:

• Publish 5-10 good-quality trending news articles daily. Don’t publish garbage articles like web series, etc.
• NEVER use any affiliate links to a news article being pushed onto Google News.
• After indexing, send direct traffic to the article to improve the chance of getting into Discover.

A word of caution: being a Google News-approved Publisher

“With great power comes great responsibility.“

If your website is on Google News, congratulations! You now have potential access to the World’s biggest content distribution platform. That said, do not abuse the system by spreading non-news blog posts, hateful articles, and monetary articles. Only use it for proper news articles. Please adhere to Google News content policy, otherwise, they may kick you out of Google News by manual action.

What do you think? Please give us your opinion on X (Twitter)

Conclusion

Google News helps index newly published news articles on Google very quickly, and if the article is click-worthy, readworthy, and share-worthy, it will be on Discover. Simple math!