Your Site is Finally on Google News? Not Forever!
Getting included in Google News database is not an easy task. Their guidelines are not that clear and sometimes it appears that you have to do something special to get listed. Here is an example of our communication with Google regarding the matter. Doesn’t make much sense, right?
However, it seems that even if you are among those fortunate to get listed in the Google News database, your worries are far from over. According to a public announcement, made by Harvey P. from Google “… we (Google – J.S.) periodically review sites in our database. Sometimes, we include or remove sites based on a series of quality guidelines…” This means that you can get “kicked off” from the list any time. And as Harvey confesses, sometimes even without a proper explanation: “…Google employees don’t comment publicly on why a specific site has been removed from Google News.… when it comes to questions seeking input about a site’s removal, our team will not provide public feedback.”
He, of course, recommends contacting Help Center in case of site rejection or removal, but clearly states that “…we can’t promise personalized responses for every email.”
So if you had worked so hard to be included in Google News and all of the sudden you are not there anymore – there is a chance you will be left wondering what you did wrong. It seems, the wrong thing is to count on Google. But the sad truth is that website owners do not have much of a choice. Not yet…
