If you opened Publisher Center looking for the old “Add publication” and RSS-section screens, you did not miss a hidden menu. Google retired that manual Google News workflow. The useful work now happens on your own WordPress site: publish original, policy-compliant reporting that Google can crawl, understand, attribute, and confidently present.

The answer in plain language

There is no current button that submits an ordinary WordPress site to Google News. Content that follows Google News and Search policies is automatically eligible for consideration, but eligibility, crawling, indexing, ranking, appearance in News, and receiving an automatically generated publication page are separate outcomes. None is guaranteed.

What Google’s systems evaluate

  • Policy compliance and the absence of deceptive, dangerous, hateful, manipulated, spammy, or other disallowed material.

  • Relevance, prominence, authoritativeness, freshness, location, and language for a particular user and story.

  • Clear article identity: headline, publication/update time, byline, author profile, publisher, and contact information.

  • Original reporting and meaningful editorial value rather than rewritten or automatically scaled summaries.

  • Crawlable canonical URLs, accessible page content, stable links, and consistent mobile rendering.

  • Representative, crawlable images and machine-readable article information.

  • A sustainable publishing record; technical markup alone cannot manufacture editorial authority.

1. Establish ownership and inspect indexing

  1. Add and verify the preferred domain property in Google Search Console.

  2. Submit the canonical XML sitemap generated by WordPress or a reputable SEO plugin.

  3. Inspect representative article URLs and confirm Google can fetch the rendered page.

  4. Review Page indexing, Crawl stats, Security issues, Manual actions, and Core Web Vitals reports.

  5. Use the URL Inspection tool after publishing important coverage, but do not repeatedly request indexing as a substitute for discovery and quality.

  6. Grant each teammate the minimum Search Console permission they need; account ownership is operational access, not a News ranking signal.

2. Verify a published article from the outside

Any workstation with curlbash
ARTICLE_URL="https://example.com/news/example-story/"
curl -sSIL "$ARTICLE_URL"
curl -sS "$ARTICLE_URL" | grep -E 'canonical|datePublished|dateModified|NewsArticle|og:image' | head -20
HTTP/2 200
link rel="canonical" ...
"@type":"NewsArticle"
"datePublished":"2026-08-14T09:30:00+05:30"

This is a transport and markup sanity check

  • Replace the example with one canonical production article URL.

  • curl -I follows redirects and reveals the final HTTP response; News pages should not depend on login or cookies.

  • The second command looks for common identity fields in server HTML. Client-only injection may not appear in this check.

  • A match proves text exists, not that JSON-LD is valid; use Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator too.

  • Confirm the canonical destination, structured data, visible dates, and Open Graph image all describe the same article.

  • Do not infer Google News inclusion from a successful HTTP response.

3. Publish transparent article pages

  • Show one clear headline that accurately reflects the report.

  • Display the original publication date/time and meaningful update time with timezone consistency.

  • Give every article a visible byline linked to a useful author page describing expertise and accountability.

  • Maintain About, editorial standards, corrections, ownership/funding, and contact pages that are easy to find.

  • Label sponsored, affiliate-supported, opinion, analysis, and corrected content honestly.

  • Keep advertising and promotional material from overwhelming or masquerading as editorial content.

  • Provide a visible correction note when a material fact changes instead of silently rewriting history.

4. Emit accurate Article structured data

Rendered JSON-LD on a news articlejson
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "mainEntityOfPage": "https://example.com/news/example-story/",
  "headline": "A precise headline matching the visible article",
  "datePublished": "2026-08-14T09:30:00+05:30",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-14T11:10:00+05:30",
  "image": [
    "https://example.com/uploads/example-story-1600x900.jpg"
  ],
  "author": [{
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Anika Rao",
    "url": "https://example.com/authors/anika-rao/"
  }],
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example Newsroom",
    "url": "https://example.com/"
  }
}

Structured data confirms what readers can see

  • Choose NewsArticle, Article, or BlogPosting based on the actual page type.

  • mainEntityOfPage and the page canonical should identify the same preferred URL.

  • Use ISO 8601 dates that agree with visible timestamps; do not refresh dateModified for trivial automated changes.

  • List each visible author separately and link to a real profile.

  • The image must be relevant, crawlable, indexable, and present on or representative of the page.

  • An SEO plugin may already output this graph. Configure or extend it rather than producing conflicting duplicate entities.

  • Valid markup can improve understanding but does not guarantee a rich result or News placement.

5. Make article images usable

  • Use an original or properly licensed image that represents the specific story, not a generic logo.

  • Prefer high-resolution assets with useful crops; avoid extreme aspect ratios and text-heavy thumbnails.

  • Expose the preferred image in the article, structured data, and og:image consistently.

  • Use descriptive filenames and useful alt text that describes the image for people who cannot see it.

  • Allow Googlebot and Googlebot-Image to crawl both the page and image URL.

  • Compress and size responsively to protect LCP without making the lead image blurry.

  • Set max-image-preview:large if your editorial policy permits large previews.

6. Consider a dedicated news sitemap

news-sitemap.xmlxml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/news/example-story/</loc>
    <news:news>
      <news:publication>
        <news:name>Example Newsroom</news:name>
        <news:language>en</news:language>
      </news:publication>
      <news:publication_date>2026-08-14T09:30:00+05:30</news:publication_date>
      <news:title>A precise headline matching the article</news:title>
    </news:news>
  </url>
</urlset>

A news sitemap is a discovery aid, not an application

  • A news sitemap may be separate or extend an existing sitemap; a separate file simplifies Search Console tracking.

  • Include only article URLs published during the last two days in the news metadata.

  • Update the same sitemap as articles enter and leave the two-day window rather than creating a new file each time.

  • A news sitemap can contain at most 1,000 news entries; split larger output.

  • The publication name should match the name associated with articles in Google News.

  • Submit the sitemap in Search Console and reference the sitemap index where appropriate.

  • Use a maintained WordPress integration and inspect its output—installing a plugin does not prove correctness or inclusion.

RSS still matters, just not for manual News submission

WordPress feeds remain useful for readers, syndication partners, podcast/newsletter tooling, and fast internal distribution. Keep a valid feed if it serves those audiences. But adding a featured image to RSS or submitting a feed in Publisher Center is no longer a path to create an ordinary Google News publication page.

7. Clarify site name and favicon

  • Use a consistent visible publication name on the homepage and in WebSite structured data.

  • Set a crawlable square WordPress Site Icon/favicon that remains recognizable at small sizes.

  • Keep organization identity consistent across About/contact pages, structured data, social profiles, and legal information.

  • Google ultimately selects displayed site names and favicons; markup expresses a preference, not a command.

  • Publisher Center logo customization continues only for applicable products such as News Showcase and Reader Revenue Manager.

8. Protect crawling and canonicalization

  • Return HTTP 200 for the canonical article and avoid long redirect chains.

  • Do not block article HTML, images, CSS, or essential JavaScript in robots.txt.

  • Remove accidental noindex from articles meant for discovery.

  • Choose one canonical URL and keep desktop/mobile, AMP if retained, feeds, parameters, and syndication copies consistent.

  • Link new stories from crawlable section pages and meaningful internal navigation.

  • Avoid changing article URLs after publication; create a permanent redirect if a correction requires a move.

  • Render the headline and article body in indexable HTML, not only after a fragile client-side request.

9. Measure without inventing a submission status

  • Use Search Console’s Google News performance report when sufficient data is available.

  • Compare News, Search, and Discover separately; appearance in one does not prove appearance in another.

  • Inspect individual URLs for indexing and canonical selection.

  • Monitor server logs for crawl behavior, availability errors, latency, and redirect mistakes.

  • Search Google News for the publication and representative stories as a spot check, not a complete reporting method.

  • Watch manual actions and security issues, and document material traffic changes alongside editorial and technical changes.

  • Allow time for automated systems; there is no guaranteed approval date or support ticket that forces inclusion.

Why a site may remain absent

  • The old Publisher Center publication vanished: manually created pages were retired during the 2025 transition.

  • Pages are eligible but not shown: eligibility is only consideration; ranking and selection are automated.

  • Articles are not indexed: diagnose crawlability, canonicalization, rendering, quality, duplication, and site-level signals in Search Console.

  • Only evergreen tutorials are published: do not relabel them as breaking news; focus on the surfaces matching their intent.

  • Dates or authors conflict: align visible content, metadata, sitemaps, and structured data.

  • Images never appear: verify crawlability, relevance, resolution, page placement, and metadata consistency.

  • A sitemap is accepted but URLs are absent: “Success” means Google read the file, not that every URL will be indexed or ranked.

  • Publisher Center has no Google News tile: that is expected after the product transition, not a WordPress error.

WordPress pre-publication checklist

  • Original reporting and an accurate non-clickbait headline.

  • Named author with an accessible profile and editorial accountability.

  • Visible publication time; honest modified time and correction note where necessary.

  • One indexable canonical URL returning 200.

  • Relevant large featured image with dimensions, alt text, and crawl permission.

  • Accurate Article-family JSON-LD with matching authors, dates, image, and canonical.

  • Internal link from a crawlable section or homepage.

  • News sitemap entry when the site uses one, limited to the current two-day window.

  • No accidental maintenance mode, password protection, noindex, robots block, or cache corruption.

  • Mobile readability, stable layout, fast lead content, and ads clearly separated from editorial material.

Official Google references