Empowering publishers with a new Help Center

Posted by Tanya Keen, News Support Team

How do you keep thousands of Google News publishers informed about getting their content included in Google News? In September 2006 we launched our first version of a Help Center for Publishers. Since then, Google webmaster tools expanded their offerings to enable news publishers who are already included in Google News to submit a News Sitemap. Not only does this allow publishers to control which articles go to Google News; it also allows them to get unique error reports detailing which articles were successfully crawled, and if they weren't included, why not.

So we've streamlined the way news publishers can make sure their content gets picked up by our crawlers.

Now we've adapted our Help Center for publishers to get better educated about Google webmaster tools. Publishers can now more easily let us know about changes they make to their site, including name, location or domain updates. We've also clarified how publishers go about removing an article or image from Google News, like in those cases when something has been published by mistake and the article has since been recanted. And if you were confused by our old contact forms (so what *do* I put in the state/province field of the "Send us your news site" form?), we think you'll like the ease-of-use of our new contact forms.

If you love our new Help Center, or if you don't, you can share your thoughts with us on each and every Help page you see. Just look for the "Was this helpful?" text at the bottom of the Help article to share your opinions with us. We're looking forward to hearing from you!