The News Sitemap
A Google News sitemap of the articles published in the last 48 hours, for publishers in Google News.
On this page
A Google News sitemap lists the articles you published in the last two days, so Google News can find fresh stories quickly. Hydrogen SEO publishes one at /news-sitemap.xml. It is off by default, and it is only useful for publishers whose content appears in Google News; for everyone else the regular XML sitemap already covers every post.
Turn it on
- Open Hydrogen SEO → Sitemap in wp-admin.
- In the Sitemap Status card, switch on the news sitemap.
- A panel appears with four parts:
- Publication: your publication name. It must match the name shown on news.google.com. Leave it empty to use the site title.
- Include: the post types that count as news articles. Posts are selected by default.
- Only from: categories (or terms of other hierarchical taxonomies) to limit the news sitemap to. With none selected, articles from every category are included.
- Right now: how many articles are currently in the 48-hour window.
Where it lives
The news sitemap is served at /news-sitemap.xml. It is listed in your sitemap index while it has articles in it. When nothing recent has been published, it serves an empty but valid sitemap rather than a 404.
Which articles are included
- Articles published in the last 48 hours. The window is calculated in GMT, so it is correct whatever timezone your site is set to.
- Newest first, up to 1,000 articles.
- Only from the post types under Include, and the categories under Only from when any are selected.
The news sitemap is cached, and the cache refreshes at least hourly so that articles drop out on time once they pass 48 hours.
Left out:
- Posts set to noindex
- Password-protected posts
- Posts whose canonical URL points to another page
- Posts you switch to Exclude from Google News in the post's SEO panel (Robots Meta section), stored as the
hydrogen_seo_post_meta_news_sitemap_excludemeta key
What each entry contains
Each article carries the tags Google News requires:
news:publication, with the publicationnameandlanguagenews:publication_date, in W3C formatnews:title
The language is set per article. When WPML or Polylang assigns the post a language, that language is used; otherwise the site locale is. Chinese is mapped to zh-cn or zh-tw, as Google requires.
For developers
| Filter | Arguments | Use |
|---|---|---|
hydrogen_seo_news_sitemap_publication_name | $name | Change the publication name |
hydrogen_seo_news_sitemap_language | $language, $post | Change an article's language code |
hydrogen_seo_news_sitemap_exclude_post | $excluded, $post | Leave a post out of the news sitemap |
hydrogen_seo_news_sitemap_xml | $xml | Change the raw XML of the news sitemap |
Full entries are in the filters reference.
FAQ
Do I need a news sitemap?
Only if your site appears in Google News. It lists nothing older than 48 hours, so it does not help ordinary posts get indexed; the regular XML sitemap does that.
Why is my news sitemap empty?
Either nothing has been published in the last 48 hours, or the articles you published are not in the post types under Include or the categories under Only from. The Right now count on the Sitemap screen shows what is currently in the window.
What should the publication name be?
Exactly the name your publication has on news.google.com. If you leave the field empty, the site title is used.
Why does an empty news sitemap not return a 404?
An empty news sitemap is normal for a publisher on a quiet day, so Hydrogen SEO serves a valid, empty sitemap instead of a 404.