Google News can be an excellent source of traffic for news websites.
To help Google discover your latest articles, you can submit a Google News sitemap. This is a specially formatted XML sitemap that includes news-specific tags and only lists articles published during the last two days.
A Google News sitemap does not guarantee that your articles will appear in Google News. Instead, it helps Google discover your latest news content more quickly.
In this guide, we'll show you how to create a Google News sitemap for your Joomla site using OSMap.
- Download OSMap Free or OSMap Pro.
- Install OSMap on your Joomla site.
- Go to Components > OSMap.
- OSMap automatically creates a sitemap based on your Joomla menu structure.
- Click the HTML link to verify that all of your news articles appear in the sitemap. If some articles are missing, make sure they can be reached through a published Joomla menu item. OSMap generates its sitemaps from your menu structure.
- Once you've confirmed that your articles are included, click the News link to open your Google News sitemap.
- OSMap generates an XML News sitemap that follows Google's Google News sitemap requirements.
- Submit the News sitemap URL in the Sitemaps section of Google Search Console. After it's submitted, Google will continue checking it automatically, so you don't need to resubmit it whenever you publish a new article.
Important notes
- A Google News sitemap only includes articles published during the last two days. Older articles are intentionally omitted.
- Your Google News sitemap complements your regular XML sitemap. Continue submitting your standard XML sitemap so Google can discover all the pages on your site.
- Submitting a Google News sitemap does not automatically make your site eligible for Google News. Your content must also comply with Google's news content policies and technical requirements.
Troubleshooting
- If your articles don't appear in the News sitemap, first make sure they are accessible through a published Joomla menu item.
- Remember that only articles published during the last two days will appear in the News sitemap.
- Check that your articles are published, publicly accessible, and not restricted by Joomla Access settings or Robots configuration.
Video introduction to OSMap
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