TECHNICAL · SEO GLOSSARY

News Sitemap

A news sitemap is a specialised sitemap format for Google News publishers — using the news: XML extension to declare recently published articles (within the past 48 hours) and their publication metadata, enabling rapid discovery and indexing by Google News.

Definition

Google News is a separate search surface from standard Google web search — it surfaces recent news articles from approved publishers in the Google News app, the News tab in Google Search, and the Top Stories carousel in web search. To appear in Google News, a site must: (1) be approved as a Google News publisher (via the Publisher Center at publishercenter.google.com); (2) produce original news content meeting Google News content policies; (3) submit a news sitemap that helps Google News discover new articles quickly. **News sitemap structure**: uses the news: XML namespace. Each <url> entry for a news article includes <news:news> with <news:publication> (publication name and language), <news:publication_date> (ISO 8601 format — required for Google News eligibility), and <news:title> (article headline). Optional: <news:keywords> for news topic categorisation. **Time constraint**: news sitemaps should only include articles published within the past 48 hours. Google News indexes time-sensitive content rapidly, and the news sitemap is the fastest path to discovery. After 48 hours, the article should remain in the regular XML sitemap but can be removed from the news sitemap. **Implementation**: WordPress plugins (Yoast SEO premium, WP Google News Sitemap Generator), custom implementations for Next.js and other frameworks. The news sitemap URL is submitted in Google Search Console under the Sitemaps section separately from the main sitemap. **Top Stories carousel eligibility**: even without formal Google News publisher approval, articles with Article or NewsArticle JSON-LD (including datePublished and a valid image) can appear in the Top Stories carousel for eligible breaking news queries — the news sitemap accelerates discovery for these too.

Why it matters for SEO

For news publishers, the news sitemap is critical for Top Stories carousel visibility — articles that don\'t get crawled within minutes of publication miss the window for trending news coverage. Google News discovery without a news sitemap relies on Googlebot\'s regular crawl schedule, which may have a lag of hours to days. News sitemaps enable near-real-time indexing for time-sensitive content.

How DeepSEOAnalysis checks this

The audit detects whether news sitemap extension tags (news:news elements in sitemap entries) are present for sites that appear to be news publishers. For sites with Article or NewsArticle JSON-LD, the audit validates that required properties for Top Stories eligibility (headline, datePublished, image) are present and correctly formed.