Is my site in Google News? Free check
We search Google News for your domain's articles in your site's language, and check what Google documents: robots.txt not blocking Googlebot-News, a News sitemap, a date and author on a real article, and About and Contact pages.
What it checks
- Served over HTTPSWithout TLS, everything a visitor types can be read on the way, and browsers mark the site "Not secure".
- IndexableA noindex tag or a blanket robots.txt block removes the site from search results altogether.
- Structured data (JSON-LD)Lets search engines show rich results — ratings, prices, breadcrumbs — instead of plain blue links.
- robots.txtThe first file a crawler reads. Missing is tolerable; an HTML error page in its place is not.
- XML sitemapTells engines every page you have, including the ones no link reaches.
- robots.txt and Googlebot-NewsGooglebot-News follows its own group in robots.txt, else Googlebot's, else the general one. Blocking the whole site there keeps your articles out of the news however good they are.
- Who publishes the site, and how to reach themGoogle News's transparency policy asks for information about the publisher, the company behind it, and a way to contact them. The usual pages for that are "About" and "Contact".
- News sitemapA sitemap for news that lists the last two days' articles with their publication dates. Google recommends it for news sites; it does not require it.
- Date and author on a real articleGoogle News's transparency policy asks for clear dates and bylines. We read one article from your site and look for both in its structured data, tags and byline.
- Your articles in Google News searchSearching Google News for your domain shows the articles that actually reached the news. We search in your site's language, because Google News editions answer differently.
Questions
How do I submit my site to Google News?
There is no application. Google includes sites automatically when they follow the Google News content policies, and Publisher Center is no longer a way in. What you can do is remove the obstacles this report names.
My articles used to show up and then disappeared. Why?
The report shows when your latest article appeared. If that is long ago, look at three things: did publishing stop, was Googlebot-News blocked or did the URLs change, and is there a manual action on the site in Search Console.
Are a News sitemap and Article markup required?
No. Google recommends both and requires neither, so their absence shows as a warning, not a failure. Blocking Googlebot-News in robots.txt, on the other hand, does keep you out.
We only read what a public visitor could. Nothing is submitted to your site and no vulnerability is exploited — findings are what your site shows, not what we tried.