Google News is arguably the biggest news website in the world today. With millions of users checking the service daily, getting your press release featured on the platform is a great way to extend your reach to a new audience.
There’s just one problem. Google News isn’t technically a news website, it is a news aggregator. As such, getting your press release on the platform isn’t as simple as emailing the Google News team or anything like that.
That said, you can still get your press release featured on Google News. You just need to get your press release on a site that Google News uses as a source. Here’s how you can do it.
Step #1 - Find a News Website
As a news aggregator, Google pools news stories from all over the web. Once indexed, those new stories can be found in the “News” tab of Google’s search engine, as well as on the Google News Website. Like this example:
However, not all websites get featured on Google News. Google has strict requirements for what sites do and don’t qualify as “news sources”. Those requirements are enforced by Google’s news indexing algorithm, which is different from their search algorithm. And is a lot pickier.
To get your press release on the service, you’ll need to find a website that Google News trusts. And then get your press release on that website. There are two ways to find trusted news publications.
1 - Check if News Sites are Google News-Approed
The first method is to find a relevant news website, then check if it is featured on Google News.
To check, go to the Google News website, and search for “site:SiteName.com” to see if any results pop up. If the site is Google News-approved, you’ll see a ton of results, including recent news stories from the site. If it isn’t, you may see no results, or just a couple of blog posts.
Google hates giving back zero results. So it may broaden the search just to give you something. But it is usually pretty obvious when a site isn’t a trusted news source. In the example below, MenaFN.com is Google News-approved, and TheWebTribune.com isn’t.
2 - Look for relevant new stories.
Another option is to look for topics and press releases relevant to your niche on Google News, then reach out to the websites that published those stories. Since you found those sites through Google News, it is safe to assume that Google News trusts them.
You can use either method or a combination of the two. Once you’ve built a short list of Google News-trusted websites you can reach out to, move on to the next step.
Step #2 - Write the Press Release
Your press release needs to follow a very specific format and style to have a chance to get on Google News. Remember, Google uses a different algorithm to compile and rank news stories. And part of the ranking process includes the use of natural language processing to interpret stories and decide whether they’re fit for the platform.
Yes, Google has its own language model for Google News. They’ve been using it since at least 2018. And it is the main reason why Google News can be picky. If your press release doesn’t sound like relevant news, it won’t appear on Google News, no matter where it’s published. Even content published on Forbes.com and Apnews.com can and will be filtered by the algorithm. As you can see here:
If you want to boost your chances of being picked up for Google News, there are two things you should do.
1 - Write a standard press release following traditional journalistic conventions. This guide will give you the details.
2 - Make the press release “news-worthy”. Your goal here is to announce something relevant to general audiences. A new hire or internal change isn’t typically considered news-worthy. Your business expanding to a new city or a new product launch might be.
Once the content is ready, all that’s left is publishing it.
Step #3 - Distribute the Press Release
You have your press release. You have your list of Google News-approved sites. Now it’s time to get A to B. There are three main ways you can distribute your press release. They are:
1 - Work with a PR firm.
2 - Hire an outreach agency.
3 - Do outreach yourself
The first two are faster and have a higher success rate, but they’ll cost you. For the third one, the only cost is your time. We wrote a whole guide on how you can get free news coverage through outreach, you can read it here. The same method can be used to reach out to the sites in your short list.
If you are going to hire someone, be sure to let them know that your goal is to be on Google News, and ask for guarantees.
As I’ve shown you, even press releases published in major publications have a chance of being ignored by the algorithm. You’ll either need someone who’ll keep trying until they get it done, or you need to hire a service that will distribute your PR to dozens of different news sites to boost your chances of success.
At this point, I should mention that Invalley does offer placements on Google News-approved websites, including Apnews.com, Yahoo.com, Dailyrecord.co.uk, and more. We can’t guarantee that your PR will also be featured on Google News, but if you’re looking for a strong backlink from a news website, we can offer that. And you can take the chance of being on Google News as a potential free bonus.
