Google News introduced a new HTML tag webmasters can add to their websites- Standout. With this HTML tag webmasters can indicate to the Google bots on exclusive and/or exceptional content, so it will be featured in Google News.

The tag is integrated into the Header section of the HTML page source, so therefore it will be visible only to bots and not for humans. Its syntax is pretty basic and it look like this:

<link rel=”standout” href=“http://www.YourWebsite.com/FeaturedArticle.html”/>

Webmasters should use this tag no more than 7 times in a week, or the tags could be devalued and even completely ignored. Google additionally stating in the blog post that publishers can also point out on other standout contents outside of their website- This way, quality contributions can be more recognized and it can improve the trust of the recommending site itself.

For many people who work at home and appear on Google News with their website or blog, It is a huge source of quality traffic- Google News receives about 4 billion clicks every month! Only reliable and authoritative sites are appearing in it and this is why users are more engaged with websites/blogs they enter from Google News.

To check if your site is one of the (only) 50,000 sources online that appears in it, enter Google News homepage and type the following query:

site:YourDomain.com

If you see results, you are in.