How to create a Google News sitemap in WordPress

Step by step

1. Decide whether you need one

A news sitemap is for sites that publish timely articles several times a week or more: newsrooms, trade publications, local news. A company blog with a monthly post gains nothing, because the file would be empty most days. If your articles are evergreen guides, the normal sitemap already covers them.

2. Switch it on

1. Open Hydrogen SEO → Sitemap.
2. In Sitemap Status, switch on the news sitemap. A panel opens with four parts.
3. Click Save Changes in the top bar when you have filled it in.

The news sitemap is off by default, and it needs the main XML sitemap to be enabled, since it is listed in the same index.

3. Set the publication name

In Publication, enter the name of your publication exactly as it appears on news.google.com if you are listed there, without extra words such as "Inc." or a tagline. Leave the field empty and the site title is used. A mismatch between this name and the one Google knows is a common reason articles are not associated with the publication.

4. Choose what counts as news

• Include sets the post types treated as news articles. Posts is selected by default. Add a custom post type if your newsroom uses one.
• Only from limits the sitemap to chosen categories, or terms of another hierarchical taxonomy. With nothing selected, articles from every category qualify. Use it when the same site publishes news and evergreen content, for example to include "News" and "Analysis" but not "Guides".
• Right now shows how many articles are currently inside the 48-hour window, which tells you at once whether your choices match anything.

5. Open the file and read an entry

Visit https://example.com/news-sitemap.xml. Each article has a news:publication block with the name and language, a news:publication_date and a news:title. Articles are listed newest first, up to 1,000. When nothing was published in the last 48 hours the plugin serves an empty but valid file, not a 404, so Search Console does not report a fetch error on quiet days.

6. Know what is left out

An article drops out once it is more than 48 hours old. The window is calculated in GMT, and the cache refreshes at least hourly so articles leave on time. Also excluded: posts set to noindex, password-protected posts, posts whose canonical URL points somewhere else, and any post where you switch on Exclude from Google News in the Robots Meta section of its SEO Settings sheet. Use that last switch for sponsored pieces or short notices you do not want treated as news.

7. Submit the index, not the news file

The news sitemap is listed in your sitemap index at /sitemap.xml while it has articles. If the index is already submitted in Search Console, you are done. Submitting /news-sitemap.xml on its own is optional and only useful if you want its status reported separately. See submit a sitemap to Google.

Why an article is missing

Work through these in order. Was it published more than 48 hours ago? Updating an old post does not bring it back, because the window uses the publish date. Is its post type ticked under Include? Is it in a category selected under Only from? Is the post noindex, or does its canonical point elsewhere? Then purge any page cache or CDN in front of the site, which may be holding an older copy of the XML.

What else news articles need

The sitemap helps discovery. The article page still has to be clear about what it is: a visible headline, a visible date, an author byline, and Article structured data that agrees with them. Article schema can be applied to every post at once from Hydrogen SEO's Schema screen. For breaking stories, also request indexing for the URL in Search Console, since even a news sitemap is read on Google's schedule, not instantly.