Google News Sitemap

[TommyMac]

Hi There,

I am keen to make use of the news sitemap. As per advice on the HubSpot blog ""If you publish news and want to get those news articles featured on top stories and Google News, you need a news sitemap." https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/build-sitemap-website 

However exploring the HubSpot options, I could not find a way to add the required tags. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/news-sitemap 

Does anyone know how I would do this using HubSpot CMS professional? 

[GRajput]

Hi @TommyMac 

Yeah, this file includes the required <urlset>, <url>, and <loc> tags, as well as the optional <lastmod> tag. You cannot add additional tags to your CMS sitemap.xml file.

I hope this will help you out. Please mark it as Solution Accepted and upvote to help another Community member.
Thanks!

[TommyMac]

Thank you @BérangèreL for such a quick reply. Much appreicated. 

I did find that resource: "View and edit your HubSpot-hosted domain sitemap" previously. I have generated a normal XML sitemap and my news pages are blog pages, so are automatically added to that as they are published. 

However, the article above does not show how you would generate a 'news sitemap'. 

As Google has different types of sitemaps and the HubSpot generated one is a general xml sitemap. It does not allow you to add the required tags as below.

e.g. these are some of the required tags for a Google News sitemp
<news:news> 
<news:publication>
<news:name>
<news:language>
<news:publication_date>

How can I get these tags into the article? - see here for the required tags: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/news-sitemap

Would I need to add them to the additional code snippets in the HubSpot CMS editor, within the 'Additional code snippets' in the advanced settings on each blog item?

I am worried as the article in HubSpot does say 
"Your sitemap.xml file will include the required <urlset>, <url>, and <loc> tags, as well as the optional <lastmod> tag. There is no way to add additional tags to your CMS sitemap.xml file.

Does this mean I can never make the almost required Google news sitemap for better success within Google news????? 

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@TommyMac It's not possible to add the news tags to the HubSpot Sitemap XML - this would have to be a dynamic feature as Google doesn't allow news that is older than 2 days to have these tags.

I've also verified that you can't create or upload an XML file via Design Tools.

My suggestion would be to submit an idea to the discussion here for the product team to review, this is a very specific use case and I'm not sure it would gain much traction.

it's important to note that your "blog" isn't considered "news" unless it meets the requirements:

Google News is a news aggregator, you can read more on wikipedia here.

You have to request to be a publisher with Google before you can submit a news sitemap.

You might be better off exploring a Press Release option like GlobalNewswire if you need to distribute news about your company (vs. being a news publisher).

Hope this helps!

[TommyMac]

Thanks Jenifer and Gaurav. Much appreciate the replies. 

Its a shame that Hubspot doesn't have the features to allow me to do this. 

[Jnix284]

You're welcome @TommyMac!

I imagine that most HubSpot customers don't have a blog that would qualify as news, if you think it's something others would be interested in it never hurts to add your idea here!

[BérangèreL]

Hi @TommyMac,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community!

Great to see that you are following the advice from the blog! Way to go!

I'd like to share this article "View and edit your HubSpot-hosted domain sitemap" which might be of interest.

Do you have the option to add the news pages into the sitemap? If yes, then you'll need to submit your sitemap to Google.
Or were you looking for a custom sitemap?

I'd like to invite some of our Top Experts on the subject: Hi @Crystal_Hopper, @johnelmer and @GRajput do you have any insights regarding news sitemap to share with @TommyMac, please?

Also, if anybody else has anything to add and/or share, please feel free to join in the conversation 🙂

Thank you very much ❤️ and have a fantastic day!

Best,
Bérangère