Google puts emphasis on current information within certain searches and specifically within Google News

• Often Google News results and news boxes in search results will display sites by publish date with the newest content ranking 1st

• This isn’t always the case, as relevancy and authority play a major part, but publish date can have a large impact especially when a story is breaking

• Google News requires clearly showing both the date and the time that content was published or updated

• Date and time should be positioned between the headline and the article text

• If Google has trouble finding an article's date or determines the publication date of an article is older than 2 days, it may not be included it in Google News

Avoid artificially freshening stories

• If an article has been substantially changed, you can update the date and time

• Don't artificially freshen a story without adding significant information (at least 20%) or some other compelling reason for the freshening

• Don't create a slightly updated story from one previously published, then delete the old story and redirect to the new one

• For your publication to be included in Google News, the article URL must meet the following criteria:

  • Be unique

  • Be permanent

  • Do not re-publish previously published articles under a new URL

Google will always favour websites that it has already assessed to be relevant and a potential authority on a given subject

• Warm up a story by writing about the subject prior to it 

• The upcoming subject can be a supporting topic in content created around other topic

•  When creating current content, consider future topics that might not exist yet, that would benefit from being warmed up

In order to avoid duplicate content and keep your content original, follow these guidelines: 

• Do not scrape content: scraping commonly refers to taking material from another site, often on an automated basis.

• Do not re-write existing content: rewriting refers to taking material from another site and rewriting so that the content is not identical. 

• If Google News encounters numerous versions of the same article, it may have trouble identifying which article is the original and which is a duplicate 

  • If you publish the same article on multiple pages within your site, or within your network of sites, you may want to use the rel="canonical" tag to point to the original

  • This will help Google better identify the original content and credit it appropriately

• Visitors want to trust and understand who publishes content 

• Ensure content has clear bylines, information about authors, and contact information 

• Google does not allow sites or accounts that impersonate any person or organization, or that misrepresent or conceal their ownership or primary purpose

• Google does not allow sites or accounts that mislead users, including but not limited to, sites or accounts that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or that direct content at users in another country under false premises

• Google does not allow content that infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights and will respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement

Source: Google News Producer 

• The Top Stories Dashboard will provide an idea of what's trending currently, what stories are appearing in Google's top stories carousel and what gaps could be filled when creating editorial content

• The red shading on the Top Stories Dashboard indicates that no stories from olympics.com appear in Google's top stories carousel for that keyword

• The green shading indicates that there is a story from olympics.com appearing in Google's top stories carousel for that keyword

Google focuses on:

Headline | Content intro | Body | Image Alt Text

• Google crawls a site from top to bottom and places priority on above-the-fold unique content

• Internally linking and optimising titles and content intro is key 

Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup.

To help Google to pick the right date, site owners and publishers should:

• Show a visible date prominently on the page.

• Position date and time between the headline and the article text

• If you update a page significantly, also update the visible date 

• If specifying a time, make sure to provide the correct timezone, taking into account daylight saving time

• Don’t use future dates or dates related to what a page is about: Always use a date for when a page itself was published or updated

• Troubleshoot by minimizing other dates on the page

Source: Official Google Webmaster Blog 

Content and quality questions

• Does the content provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?

• Does the content provide a substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic?

• Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond what is obvious?

• If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?

• Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?

• Does the headline and/or page title avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature?

• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

• Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?

Expertise questions

• Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s about page?

• If you researched the site producing the content, would you come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic?

• Is this content written by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?

• Is the content free from easily-verified factual errors?

• Would you feel comfortable trusting this content for issues relating to your money or your life?

Presentation and production questions

• Is the content free from spelling or stylistic issues?

• Was the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?

• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?

• Does the content have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?

• Does content display well for mobile devices when viewed on them?

Comparative questions

• Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?

• Does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of visitors to the site or does it seem to exist solely by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?

See Google search quality rater guidelines for additional detail on how Google reviewers assess content quality.