Google News extends sitemaps for publishers

 
News sitemaps tell Google which articles from a publisher should be ‘crawled’ (searched by Google’s automated spiders).

These sitemaps are being made available globally, allowing publishers to have more control over how and where their content appears on Google News.

The function was previously only available to English-language news sites.

While this move may be seen as positive for news publishers, it is double-edged. The Google News blog mentioned that content from publishers who aren’t signed on to the sitemaps will still be crawled.

So in effect, Google is forcing publishers to sign up with its sitemaps in order to have more control over their own content.

Source: Journalism.co.uk through European Journalism Centre