Working News Sitemap Generator For Google News (2015)
I looked for a plugin the other day to generate a proper Google News sitemap. Unfortunately, most of them were either not working, premium plugins or too bloated.
After looking for a good while and testing a handful of plugins, I set out to make a plugin that is compatible with recent Google News additions, including the possibility to specify many parameters manually.
I hope to maintain this plugin throughout 2014 and 2015 and add a few more features. If there are any bugs please report them so they can be fixed with the next release.
Some of the new features
- Provide publication name manually – if you don’t want it to be your Homepage name
- Provide site language using Google’s language codes
- Provide related stock tickers manually
- Rather than excluding categories, this plugin allows you to include categories only
Why You Should Include Only A Few Categories
Google is very picky about what sites they include. If you create a sitemap that is fetching content from your entire site, you won’t get accepted.
It is a far better idea to create a “News” and “Opinion Piece” category
What features will you add in the next version
Next on the list are additional genres: Opinion Piece, Op/Ed and other genres accepted by Google.
How do I avoid my blog from dropping out of Google News
For more info, check out the following article:
- [Avoiding Google News Pitfalls] (https://www.webmaster.net/one-surefire-way-of-blocking-your-news-posts-from-getting-indexed-into-google-news-from-your-wp-blog/).
- Google News Sitemap Guidelines.
Download & install the zip archive
The plugin package installer can be downloaded from the WP2E project tab called “code”.
1 – Select the version to download if this option is available otherwise the “latest” version of the main plugin will be used.
2 – After downloading the zip archive install the plugin package installer in you local environment and activate the script from the plugin list.
3 – Under the section “Plugins” of the admin dashboard you should see a new “Dependencies & Licenses” link. Follow the instructions from this panel to finalize the installation of the missing dependencies.
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- Give a name to your project
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- Download the Installer Package
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- Install & activate the plugin locally
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- Install the suggested dependencies
Tips: Use the WP2E panel to add/suggest new dependencies to the local installation. Press F5 in the list of dependencies if the changes are not displayed right away.