Google News sitemaps

When you create a Google News sitemap, follow these requirements:

Only include new URLs for articles that were created in the last two days. Once the articles are older than two days, either remove those URLs from the News sitemap or remove the <news:news> metadata from the older URLs. The articles will remain in the index for the regular 30-day period.

If you choose the method of removing old URLs from your News sitemap, this could mean that your sitemap becomes empty for a period of time (for example, if you haven't published new articles in the last few days). You may see an Empty Sitemap warning in Search Console, but this is just to make sure it was intentional on your behalf. It will not cause any problems with Google Search if the file is empty.
Update your News sitemap with new articles as they're published. Don't create a new sitemap with each update. Google News crawls News sitemaps as often as it crawls the rest of your site.
You can add up to 1,000 <url> elements in a News sitemap. If there are more than 1,000 <url> elements in a News sitemap, break your sitemap into several smaller sitemaps, and use a sitemap index file to manage them as defined by the sitemap protocol. Since News sitemaps are crawled more often than web sitemaps, this limit ensures that your site isn't unnecessarily overloaded.
Our documentation on sitemaps also applies to the sitemap extensions. Make sure to follow general sitemap guidelines.

Example sitemap entry

A Google News sitemap uses the sitemap protocol. Here's an example of a News sitemap entry:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9">
  <url>
   <loc>http://www.example.org/business/article55.html</loc>
   <news:news>
   <news:publication>
     <news:name>The Example Times</news:name>
     <news:language>en</news:language>
   </news:publication>
   <news:publication_date>2008-12-23</news:publication_date>
     <news:title>Companies A, B in Merger Talks</news:title>
    </news:news>
  </url>
</urlset>

Sites with a News sitemap aren't favored in ranking results. Google News uses normal crawl methods to search and label the homepages and sections of all news sites, regardless of the availability of a News sitemap.

Submit your sitemap

After you've created your News sitemap, submit it through Search Console. We recommend that you upload your sitemap to the directory that contains your news articles or a directory closer to the root of your site. For more information, learn how to manage sitemaps.

News-specific tag definitions

Review the following Google News tags for sitemaps:

Tag Required? Description

Tag	Required?	Description
`<publication>`	Yes	The publication where the article appears. It has two required child tags: `<name>` and `<language>`. The `<name>` tag is the name of the news publication. It must exactly match the name as it appears on your articles on news.google.com, except for anything in parentheses. The `<language>` tag is the language of your publication. Use an ISO 639 language code (two or three letters). Exception: For Simplified Chinese, use `zh-cn` and for Traditional Chinese, use `zh-tw`.
`<publication_date>`	Yes	The article publication date in W3C format. Use either the "complete date" format (`YYYY-MM-DD`) or the "complete date plus hours, minutes, and seconds" format with time zone designator format (`YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD`). Specify the original date and time when the article was published on your site. Don't specify the time when you added the article to your sitemap. The Google News crawler accepts any of the following formats: Complete date: `YYYY-MM-DD (1997-07-16)` Complete date plus hours and minutes: `YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD (1997-07-16T19:20+01:00)` Complete date plus hours, minutes, and seconds: `YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD (1997-07-16T19:20:30+01:00)` Complete date plus hours, minutes, seconds, and a decimal fraction of a second: `YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD` (`1997-07-16T19:20:30.45+01:00`)
`<title>`	Yes	The title of the news article. Tip: Google may shorten the title of the news article for space reasons when displaying the article on Google News. Include the title of the article as it appears on your site. Don't include the author name, publication name, or publication date in the News sitemap `<title>` tag.

<publication>

Yes

The publication where the article appears. It has two required child tags: <name> and <language>.
The <name> tag is the name of the news publication. It must exactly match the name as it appears on your articles on news.google.com, except for anything in parentheses.

The <language> tag is the language of your publication. Use an ISO 639 language code (two or three letters).

Exception: For Simplified Chinese, use zh-cn and for Traditional Chinese, use zh-tw.

<publication_date>

Yes

The article publication date in W3C format. Use either the "complete date" format (YYYY-MM-DD) or the "complete date plus hours, minutes, and seconds" format with time zone designator format (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD). Specify the original date and time when the article was published on your site. Don't specify the time when you added the article to your sitemap.

The Google News crawler accepts any of the following formats:

Complete date: YYYY-MM-DD (1997-07-16)
Complete date plus hours and minutes: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD (1997-07-16T19:20+01:00)
Complete date plus hours, minutes, and seconds: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD (1997-07-16T19:20:30+01:00)
Complete date plus hours, minutes, seconds, and a decimal fraction of a second: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD (1997-07-16T19:20:30.45+01:00)

<title>

Yes

The title of the news article.

Tip: Google may shorten the title of the news article for space reasons when displaying the article on Google News. Include the title of the article as it appears on your site. Don't include the author name, publication name, or publication date in the News sitemap <title> tag.