Help: domain name change and Google News

[christyrobinson]

Hi. I work for a regional news source, and our (separate) Spanish-language news publication recently changed its domain name. The publication lost its Google News inclusion. Most of their traffic came from Google News, so traffic tanked. They're trying to get back in. They reapplied but didn't get approved. They're now in the 30-day waiting period to reapply again.

The website is run by a third-party company, which handled the domain name change in April (2015). That company has been running their site for a couple of years. Our in-house devs' hands are tied on helping, because we (at the mother company) don't manage their site. This third party has not been responsive.

The Spanish pub folks have reached out to me to help them prepare for Round 2 of reapplication. I'm the mothership in-house SEO, but I've never experienced this situation before. Because everything seems to be in order besides the ham-handed changes, my best advice to them so far is: You'll have to wait until Google gets to know you again, unfortunately.

Does that sound right? Any pointers out there for bringing their best possible A-game to the next round?

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Christy,

I think my biggest piece of advice other than "hang tight" is, what did they change other than the domain name?

• Did they change the look and feel of the site?
• Did they change the URL structure (this is especially important, since Google looks at the URL for dates)?
• Did they update their Google News sitemap?
• Are they still properly using Google News meta tags, specifically news_keywords?
• Did they remove Authorship? (I have no proof of this, but I've heard rumors that people think Google still uses Authorship, even though they've removed it. It's possible that's just a mean rumor from bitter SEOs after their rich snippet loss, though.)

Also, did Google give any feedback when they rejected their first application?

Best,

Kristina

[christyrobinson]

Thanks for replying, Kristina. I spoke to my Al Dia contact for answers to your questions:

Did they change the look and feel of the site? No, it’s the same as before.

**Did they change the URL structure (this is especially important, since Google looks at the URL for dates)? **The only change it is the name on the url , the date still appears the same as before on each story. Now: http://aldiadallas.com/news/2003/aug/05/co0867348576356/. Before: http://aldiatx.com/news/2003/aug/05/co0867348576356/.

**Did they update their Google News sitemap? **When they requested the google news confirmation, they did include the new sitemap.

Are they still properly using Google News meta tags, specifically news_keywords? They are using open graph tags. I'm not familiar with specific Google News meta tags or news_keywords -- can you point me to a resource on that? I might be mis-googling; I'm not able to find anything specific to that kind of tagging.

Did they remove Authorship? She says she's not sure about Authorship. I'm thinking it wasn't part of the overall scheme to begin with.

Also, did Google give any feedback when they rejected their first application? Google just said to reapply in 60 days and check their guidelines.

Thanks in advance for any other insight you (or anyone else reading this) else can lend.

[KristinaKledzik]

That's a bummer, that Google didn't give more feedback.

My question about meta keywords is related to this: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68297?hl=en

Other than that and what I've listed, I can't think of anything else that you'd need to keep an eye on. Let us know how things go when Google reevaluates!

Best,

Kristina

[christyrobinson]

Thank you Kristina; I'll take a look.