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Google News vs. Top Stories

When looking at news ranking types on Google, there is some confusion about Google News (news.google.com) vs. the Top Stories, or News Boxes, on the SERPs.

Here’s a short breakdown:

Google News (news.google.com)

  • Appears on desktop – there is also a mobile app that generally has about the same content ranking as the desktop version
  • Generally gets less traffic to stories than News Boxes
  • Broken down by category (left side). Notably there is no politics category
  • Articles or videos can appear – videos are overwhelmingly youtube.com, so having a YouTube channel/strategy is important
  • AMP is not used/a ranking factor on Google News
  • Content is chosen by a combination of algorithms and human editors
  • Getting into Google News is now an automated process – if a website’s content meets the Google news guidelines, it has the chance to rank
  • Ranking in Google News or News Boxes is NOT a guarantee a publisher or piece of content will rank well in the other

News Boxes (Top Stories Boxes) on the SERP

  • Appear on desktop and mobile search engine results pages (SERPs)
  • News Boxes can appear in one of four forms: text headlines with a small image; test headlines on top of a carousel; a single carousel;  or multiple carousels stacked vertically
  • Generally the biggest source of news rankings traffic
  • Keyword/keyword phrase-specific
  • 80 percent or more of keywords in U.S.-English have a News Box
  • On mobile, AMP is heavily favored – this is expected to change with Core Web Vitals, maybe as early as March 2021
  • Content is chosen exclusively by algorithm, according to Google

  • Dele Aro

    Head of SEO

    News Dashboard is a best in class News SEO optimisation tool. It’s powerful suite of features helps our SEO team understand our sites ranking visibility across Google web and Google News which are critical platforms for our traffic and PV targets. It also supports our Editorial team in understanding which stories are trending, how competitor publishers are responding and ranking for those stories and whether there are opportunities for us to create new stories or tweak existing coverage.

  • Carly Steven

    Head of SEO

    News Dashboard is an essential tool for the SEO team at The Sun, helping us to track our daily visibility for the keywords we care about as well as analyse long term trends for the topics we want to win on. We use many tools in our newsroom but most are limited to organic results only. ND is the only one that gives us insights into Top Stories on mobile and desktop specifically which makes it invaluable as this is where so much of our editorial focus lies. The Trisolute team is always available to provide training and help find solutions to the problems we want to solve. I would recommend ND to anyone working in SEO for news publishers.

  • Teresa Mariano

    SEO consultant, people.com

    News Dashboard gives us daily insight into our Google visibility and competitive landscape. Monitoring the Missing Topics feature is now a staple of our newsroom meetings to help identify gaps in our coverage and prioritize the news cycle. Customizing keywords to monitor, especially for major entertainment industry events and award shows, is key to our editorial strategy.

  • Christine Roberts

    Former Director Audience Development, Axios

    News Dashboard helps us optimize our content to increase our visibility in Google News. With its Missing Topics feature, we are able to easily identify keywords and stories that are trending in Google News that we haven't covered yet, and make decisions about how we prioritize coverage. The dashboard also gives us valuable insight into how Google is indexing our content, and how our visibility in Google News is faring overtime.

  • Barry Adams

    Founder & SEO Consultant at Polemic Digital

    The News Dashboard product from Trisolute is a true game-changer for publishing SEO, as it provides real-time monitoring of a publisher's presence in Google News. This allows SEO teams and editors to react quickly and claim a larger share of online news traffic. Can't recommend it highly enough, it's a revolutionary tool that has the potential to dramatically change how publishers approach Google News optimization.

  • Jim Robinson

    Founder, ClickSeed

    I don’t know of any other tool on the market that can match the level of insight into Google News and news box visibility that Trisolute News Dashboard provides. Top Stories news boxes, in particular, can be a major traffic source for news publishers. But that traffic is difficult to identify, especially in real time, since analytics platforms usually group it into one big bucket with the rest of Google’s organic search traffic. By pinpointing when specific stories are appearing in news boxes for important search queries (and when they’ve dropped out), News Dashboard provides editorial teams with highly actionable insight that allows them to maximize visibility in these high-profile placements.

  • Patricia Kämpf

    Online Editor SEO at web.de and GMX

    Name of the article, keywords, News Box position: The Trisolute News Dashboard tells us all this at one glance. When we have lost a ranking, we are able to react within a narrow time-frame, because the News Dashboard gives us real-time information. These functions help us work faster and more effective and monitor our topics – an incalculable value for an up-to-the-minute news desk. The tool is primarily neat, and we receive fast and non bureaucratic help whenever questions occur.

  • Johannes Bornewasser

    SEO manager, RP Online

    News Dashboard is a mighty tool for informing the editorial department quickly and clearly about the current rankings of news topics in Google News. Working with Trisolute Software is pleasant and productive because of their high understanding of editorial workflows and requirements. Furthermore, assessment and implementation get carried out fast and in close co-operation, as it happened e.g. with the Newsroom tool. Therefore we often, gladly and confidently recommend Trisolute Software’s solutions.

  • Björn Wagner

    Audience development manager, ZEIT ONLINE

    Trisolute Software’s team knows editorial processes and understands what media businesses hold to be important for data analysis. Our News Dashboard enables us to see potential and extend our reach. It is a clear tool, which lets us carry out detailed analyses of keywords and topics that are important for us. We appreciate the personal support and the continuous development with Trisolute Software.

  • Philipp Bojen

    SEO product manager, Süddeutsche Zeitung

    The News Dashboard shows me which topics work for us and which ones work for competitors beyond the regular visibility indices. This happens regardless of location, in the desired frequency and with a revolutionary granularity. Thus, it helps us enormously to reveal new potentials, and in the long term it helps increase the efficiency of our traffic and strategy of reach.

  • Johannes Schmitt

    SEO manager, RTL Interactive GmbH

    The Trisolute Software News Dashboard has helped us increase our visibility in Google News significantly. Through concrete recommendations for action, the tool is easily integrated into editorial workflows. As we are a provider of multiple verticals, we only need the data of a section of Google News. Therefore we like the filtering capabilities of the News Dashboard. These have improved over the course of working with Trisolute Software and were adapted to our specific needs.

  • Niels Dahnke

    SEO specialist, Madsack Online GmbH & Co. KG

    The News Dashboard is an excellent tool, which highly facilitates the communication between the editorial office and the SEO/product management. At the same time it also raises visits. Editorial offices can measure their own performance as well as to be encouraged by their performance control in the future.

  • Raphael Raue

    former Head of SEO and web analysis, Spiegel Online

    Do we rank with this teaser in Google?" Although seemingly a simple question, the topic has become more complex in the last years. We use the News Dashboard at SPIEGEL ONLINE to keep up with all the different ways Google showcasts content, so we can be always where our readers are. It helps us with our strategic planning, our daily work and monitoring.

  • Patrick Rösing

    Head of Editorial SEO department, Stern

    Poking around in the dark is over with Trisolute. The News Dashboard helps editors with discovering topics and the optimization of our content and prevents us from backing the wrong horse. We measure our long-term success with the KPI Dashboard. The Trisolute team knows how an editorial office works and is always open for feedback.

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