Google News is a news aggregator powered by Google’s search engine. The service compiles articles from publishers and other websites to create a personalized newspaper for users. Users can subscribe to different sections, such as “politics” or “technology,” allowing them to get regular news updates on the topics that interest them the most.
The service is computer generated, and it collects news items from more than 50,000 news outlets. When news items are collected, they are then displayed according to certain criteria such as the category they belong to, location, language, and so on.
To use Google News, all you have to do is go here and you will automatically get the top stories in the categories of your choosing. Most people using the service will be looking for regular news in a particular industry or set of categories, and the site offers a wide range of options to choose from. It’s ideal for people who need to keep up to date with developments in a particular industry and presents an opportunity for publishers who want to get their content noticed.
What Is the Google News Performance Report?

Online marketers rely heavily on feedback regarding how well websites and other assets are performing. Various marketing feedback tools are available that provide marketers with the information they need, allowing them to plan and adapt their strategies accordingly.
The Google News performance report is an example of such a tool that provides feedback on the performance of news content specifically. The report can be found in the Google Search Console in the vertical menu bar on the left-hand side. It provides information on performance metrics that include:
- Clicks
- Impressions
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Device used
- Date
- Country
How Your Website Will Benefit from the Google News Performance Report
Google News is just like the standard Google Search service in many ways. People perform a search and they click on any suitable results that come up. This brings traffic directly to your website. The Google News performance report helps you create content that ranks well in Google News, which can mean plenty of traffic coming your way. Not only that, but it’s also highly relevant traffic because people coming to your website have an interest in the news item you published.
How Much Traffic?
In March 2021, almost 540 million people visited Google News in the United States alone. It’s easy to see how gaining just a tiny fraction of that traffic will help to drive visitors to your website.
The nature of Google News means that any content needs to be considered newsworthy if it is to be listed, making it suitable for certain types of websites. These are typically news outlets like the BBC and CNN. Other suitable websites include those that focus on particular niche topics such as 3D printing, manufacturing or virtual reality and publish relevant news in their focus niche.
While it’s true that you’re likely to find the big players producing much of the content listed on Google News, it does not mean that smaller websites and organizations can’t also have their content shown. With the Google News performance report, you are armed with the information you need to get your content ranking even above some of the biggest names in news publication.
Below is a brief look at what it takes to get your news content listed on Google News and how the Google News performance report can help you meet these requirements.
Create Fresh Content
By its very nature, news should be fresh. It should be new information that informs people of recent developments. It’s a good idea to try and publish news as soon as the information is available to give yourself a better chance of ranking well.
Write Clear Headlines
Your headlines help tell Google News what your content is about, so try and make sure they are clear to help Google’s crawler read them. Try also to resist the temptation to use catchy, gimmicky titles because they sound good. They might sound good, but overdo it and you may be making it harder for Google’s crawlers to understand the heading, while it can also make it confusing to people.
Remember — a high CTR is important, and clear headlines will encourage the right people to click on your link, improving your CTR in addition to driving more traffic your way. If the Google News performance report says you have a low CTR, your headings may be part of the problem.
Relevance
Relevance is a key aspect of getting any content listed, and news content is no exception. To let Google News know that your content is relevant to what people are looking for, make sure:
- You use the right keywords,
- And the keywords you use are relevant to the article.
Google’s algorithm prioritizes customer value management, and it will know if your keywords don’t fit what the user was looking for when they clicked on the content. For example, If they’re searching for vape juice, bombarding them with links promoting hotels at Niagara Falls will be useless, and you will likely have a high bounce rate from any traffic you do get anyway.
Make sure also to do research on which keywords to use. Try and target those with a high search volume and low/medium competition. The Google Ads Keyword Planner is an excellent keyword research tool that’s also free to use.
Create SEO-Friendly Content
SEO-friendly content means content that Google finds easy to read; it is also usually easy for people to read.
In addition to using the right keywords and clear headings, you should:
- Break up the text into manageable chunks,
- Use subheadings that help give Google’s crawlers more information about your website,
- Format the text to make your content friendly to Google’s crawlers and human readers by using bold and italics to highlight particular words or terms,
- And use bullet points to help emphasize certain text where appropriate.
Trustworthiness
Google wants its users to have a positive experience when using their service to find news. This means bringing their users news from reliable sources that can be trusted.
To achieve this, you should:
- Ensure any news articles you publish are accurate,
- And focus on creating good quality copy that encourages your visitors to stay on your site and continue reading. Accurate news sources and good quality content will help improve your CTR, telling Google that people have found what they are looking for.
You can use the Google News performance report to tell you the CTR rate of your articles, helping you gauge how trustworthy your readers find your news content to be. This won’t only help you get noticed on Google News but also in standard Google searches.
Originality
When it comes to news, many stories are basically rehashes of other reports. Try and make your news reports as original as possible to help them stand out from the rest. Look for insights that other outlets may not have covered, and use a plagiarism checker to avoid duplicating content.
Use Images and Video
Images and video are also very beneficial when it comes to getting your content noticed. For one thing, they make your content more aesthetically pleasing and help to break up the content into easily digestible sections. Images and video can also help your readers to envision and understand the content better. These factors can help to improve your CTR — making it more likely your content will appear on Google News.
Don’t forget to use alt-text and other descriptors on your images and video because these will also help make your content more visible to search engines and to people.
Submitting Your Website to Google News
In order to get your website listed in Google News, you will first need to get it registered with the service. You will find the option to do this in the Google Search Console. You will be asked to complete a registration form that asks for information like a description of your website.

Once you’ve submitted your registration form, you will receive an email from Google requesting more information, and it’s important to take the Google News guidelines into account when replying. When you have responded, it might take a couple of months to be accepted. Don’t stop publishing news content in the meantime, however, to help ensure your registration is accepted.
Google News Can Draw Substantial Traffic to Your Site
If you are a news outlet, or if you focus on a particular niche and you publish news updates in that niche, Google News is an excellent way to get noticed, and the performance report is a great way to track how well you’re being noticed.
As with other types of content, it helps to have feedback on the performance of content you’ve previously published to help you make adjustments to your strategy and plan future news content. The Google News performance report is a powerful analytical tool that provides useful statistics on a number of metrics that help you understand how your content is performing. Use it right, and it could help your website get its fair share of traffic, even among some of the biggest names out there.