Google News Publication Centre is Changing: What You Need to Know

Big Changes Coming to Google News in March 2025

Google News is making a big shift! Starting in late March 2025, publication pages will be automatically generated. This means that publishers will no longer be able to manually create or update their publication pages. Instead, Google News will handle everything automatically.

This change is meant to make things easier for both publishers and users by streamlining the way news appears on Google.

What’s Changing?

1. No More Manually Created Publication Pages

• Google News will no longer use RSS feeds or website links that publishers previously submitted.
• Any publication pages created manually in the Publisher Center will disappear.
• Some publications might not have an automatically generated page at all.

2. Publisher Center Features Are Going Away

• Customization features for publication pages will no longer be available.
• The Google News tile will no longer appear in Publisher Center.
• Publishers will no longer be able to update their logos or publication titles through Publisher Center.

3. New Logo and Title System

Instead of manually setting up logos and titles, Google News will now use:

• Favicons from the publisher’s website for logos.
• Site names from Google Search for publication titles.

If you want your logo and title to display correctly, make sure to:

• Define a favicon for your site.
• Provide a site name in Google Search settings.

Will This Affect How News Appears in Google?

Nope! These changes do not affect what content is eligible to appear in Google News or other Google news surfaces. As long as publishers follow Google’s content policies, their articles will still be considered for ranking.

Google’s ranking system will continue to prioritize content based on:

• Relevance (how useful the content is to a search)
• Prominence (how popular or trusted the source is)
• Freshness (how new the content is)
• Location & Language (where the content is from and in which language)

Global Distribution & Content Access

• Content in Google News is available worldwide by default.
• Starting next month, publishers won’t be able to block their content from appearing in certain countries (except for News Showcase panels).
• Users will see content based on their language and region settings in Google News.

Google Assistant & News

1. Text-to-Speech News

• Google Assistant can read out news articles when users ask for updates on a specific topic (e.g., “Play news about Bitcoin”).
• This feature will only be available in the U.S. soon. It will be discontinued in other countries.
• If publishers don’t want their content to be read aloud, they can use the nopagereadaloud meta tag on their website.

2. Video News on Google News & Assistant

• Publishers can no longer submit YouTube videos to be featured in Google News or Google Assistant.
• However, YouTube content will still be automatically considered for Google Assistant and Google News.

Final Thoughts

Google News is evolving to be more automated and streamlined. While some customization features are going away, the core way news appears on Google remains unchanged. Publishers just need to ensure their website settings are optimized for Google’s automatic system.

For more details, check Google’s official Help Center resources!