Back in December 2019 or so, Google stopped the requirement for news publishers to manually submit their news site to be included in Google News. Instead, Google said it will automatically through its algorithms figure out what sites to include in Google News. The problem is, this new process is a complete failure for new publishers.
Ever since then, I have been hearing constant complaints from lesser known, mostly newish, publishers that their sites are not showing up in Google News. They have no clear way to know if they are eligible to be in Google News because there is no approval or rejection process for this anymore. Plus, even if some of their content shows up now and then, they feel that when their content is not showing up, Google is having indexing issues.
Barry Adams shared this concern on Twitter recently, saying "Another email today from a newly launched publisher that's doing everything right in terms of tech & content but is not getting any traction in Google News. The 'algorithmic' inclusion process is a farce. News on Google is poorer for it. We need the manual approval process back."
Another email today from a newly launched publisher that's doing everything right in terms of tech & content but is not getting any traction in @googlenews.
— Barry Adams 📰 (@badams) March 24, 2021
The 'algorithmic' inclusion process is a farce. News on Google is poorer for it. We need the manual approval process back.
Here are some others complaining as well:
100% I agree Barry it needs a serious overhaul!
— Richard Nazarewicz (@richardnaz) March 24, 2021
100% agree on this. GNews was a great traffic driver. I have seen it not be one once they did away with the application method
— Topher Kohan - We will get by. We will survive (@Topheratl) March 25, 2021
Agreed, got a client in limbo for more than 6 months and nothing to report 😒
— Samuel Lavoie (@samuellavoie) March 24, 2021
It's terrible. There's no way to tell how close you are, if there's a specific problem preventing it, etc.
— Jim Robinson (@whirledview) March 24, 2021
100% agree on this. GNews was a great traffic driver. I have seen it not be one once they did away with the application method
— Topher Kohan - We will get by. We will survive (@Topheratl) March 25, 2021
I recently spoke with John Shehata for my vlog and we actually spoke about this topic (video to come out in the coming weeks).
So should we go back to a manual inclusion process with notifications?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
