We can onboard your news briefing to Google Assistant if it adheres to both our eligibility and availability guidelines and the following technical requirements:
- Expose a valid XML feed that meets RSS 2.0 specifications and News briefings on Assistant specifications.
- Ensure GoogleBot
can access your RSS news feed and media files, such as audio or video. In order to comply, all
of your feeds and files must not require a login. Furthermore, none of them can use
robots.txt
to block GoogleBot.
News briefings on Assistant specifications
Align your content with the following specifications. For examples of audio and video news briefings, see the Examples section.
We require the use of tags defined by the iTunes extension, so make sure to include the
appropriate xmlns
namespace declaration in the <rss>
tag at the
top of your feed. For details, see the following example:
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd">The following table provides the specifications for news briefings RSS tags at the
<channel>
level:
News briefings publication RSS tags at the <channel> level |
|
---|---|
<title> |
Required. The name of your news content. |
<link> |
Required. The fully qualified URL of the homepage of your news content. Use either Fetch as Google or the Mobile-Friendly Test to test that the homepage is accessible to Googlebot. |
<description> |
Required. The description of your news content. |
<image> |
Required. An image associated with your news content. Images require the following:
For details, see the following example: <image> <url>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes/logo.png?s=1400</url> <title>The Example Times</title> <link>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes</link> </image> |
<itunes:block> |
Not required. A tag that protects the feed from public availability on products like iTunes or Google Podcasts. To enable protection, set the value of For details, see the following examples:
|
<item> |
Required. A tag that contains the details for the news briefings episode, such as the title, description, media file, and duration. News briefings on Google Assistant only plays the latest news content available, such as
content from the most recent For details on the required specifications, see News briefings episode RSS tags. |
<item>
level:
News briefings episode RSS tags at the <item> level |
|
---|---|
<title> |
Required. The name of the news briefings episode. |
<description> |
Required. The description of the news briefings episode. |
<enclosure> |
Required. The file size, type, and location of the news briefings episode. The
For details, see the following examples:
|
<guid> |
Required. A permanently assigned, case-sensitive Global Unique Identifier (GUID) for each news briefings episode. If your identifier isn’t a fully qualified URL, set the For details, see the following examples:
|
<pubDate> |
Required. The date and time when the news briefings episode was released. These values are only supported in the RFC 822 format for dates and times. For details, see the following example: <pubDate>Thu, 22 Sep 2016 21:11:46 GMT</pubDate> |
<itunes:duration> |
Required. The news briefings episode’s length of time in hours, minutes, and seconds. You can specify one of the following formats, where H = hours, M = minutes, and S = seconds:
For details, see the following examples:
|
Examples
The following examples show the minimum data set required for audio and video content for news briefings on Google Assistant. They follow RSS 2.0 and all of our technical requirements.
Audio news briefing example
The following is an example of an audio news briefing:
<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>The Example Times</title> <link>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes</link> <description>The latest news from The Example Times.</description> <language>en-us</language> <copyright>Copyright 2018 The Example Times – For Personal Use Only</copyright> <image> <url>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes/logo.png?s=1400</url> <title>The Example Times</title> <link>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes</link> </image> <itunes:block>yes</itunes:block> <item> <title>The Example Times Daily News Briefing</title> <itunes:title>The Example Times Daily News Briefing</itunes:title> <description>Your daily dose of news from The Example Times.</description> <guid>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes/id/1234567893</guid> <enclosure length="4500000" type="audio/mpeg" url="http://www.example.com/theexampletimes/sample.mp3"/> <pubDate>Thu, 8 Jun 2018 11:11:00 GMT</pubDate> <itunes:duration>300</itunes:duration> </item> </channel> </rss>
Video news briefing example
The following is an example of a video news briefing:
<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>The Example Times</title> <link>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes</link> <description>The latest news from The Example Times.</description> <language>en-us</language> <copyright>Copyright 2018 The Example Times – For Personal Use Only</copyright> <image> <url>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes/logo.png?s=1400</url> <title>The Example Times</title> <link>http://www.example.com/theexampletimes</link> </image> <itunes:block>yes</itunes:block> <item> <title>The Example Times Daily News Briefing</title> <itunes:title>The Example Times Daily News Briefing</itunes:title> <description>Your daily dose of news from The Example Times.</description> <guid isPermaLink="false">sample-id-2345678901</guid> <enclosure length="9000000" type="video/mp4" url="http://www.example.com/theexampletimes/sample.mp4"/> <pubDate>Thu, 8 Jun 2018 11:12:00 GMT</pubDate> <itunes:duration>300</itunes:duration> </item> </channel> </rss>