Quick answer

To get considered for Google News automatically, you need to publish content that looks and behaves like real news, not only evergreen tutorials. Google says eligible content from publishers that follow its content policies is automatically eligible for consideration in Google News and other news surfaces. There is no old-style manual approval button that guarantees inclusion.

For a site like SokolovTech, the realistic path is to create a dedicated news category and publish timely technical news with original explanation. A normal guide such as “How to reduce PC power usage” is useful, but it is mostly evergreen. A more news-like article would be “Microsoft Updates Windows 11 Energy Saver Settings: What Changed and What Users Should Check”.

The goal is to help Google understand that part of your site has a consistent history of original, timely, policy-compliant news-related content. That means clear dates, clear author information, official source links, original practical analysis, crawlable pages, clean categories, structured data where appropriate, and a proper sitemap setup.

What changed with Google News

Many older guides still tell you to add a publication in Google News Publisher Center, create sections, submit RSS feeds and wait for review. That advice is outdated for Google News inclusion.

Google announced that Google News publication pages would transition to automatically generated publication pages in late March 2025. Google also stated that Google News would no longer use RSS feeds or web locations submitted in Publisher Center for these publication pages, and that the Google News tile would no longer appear in Publisher Center.

Practical plan for SokolovTech

If you want sites, like, for example, SokolovTech to be considered automatically, I would not put every article into a news strategy. Your site has different content types: Azure guides, Joomla/security tutorials, property articles, AI study notes and how-to posts. Google News is not the right target for all of them.

The better structure is to keep your evergreen guides as guides, and create a separate news-style stream for timely technical updates. That stream should be smaller, more consistent and more clearly news-related.

1. Create a dedicated News category

Create a top-level category such as Tech News or SokolovTech News. Under it, use focused subcategories only if you can publish into them consistently.

• Azure Updates: Microsoft Azure changes, service retirements, pricing changes, monitoring changes, portal changes and important feature announcements.
• Microsoft AI / Foundry Updates: Microsoft Foundry changes, model availability, retired models, SDK changes and practical migration notes.
• Website Security: Cloudflare, Joomla, WordPress, malware, WAF, hosting security and practical site-owner security alerts.
• Joomla Updates: Joomla security releases, compatibility changes and extension risks.
• Practical Tech News: Windows, browser, productivity and home-office changes when they have a practical user impact.

Do not create too many news categories at the start. A few strong categories are better than many empty ones.

2. Publish one or two news-style posts each week

You do not need to publish ten weak stories per day. For a small expert site, one or two useful news-style posts per week is a more realistic target. The key is consistency and originality.

Each news article should answer:

• What changed?
• When did it change?
• Who is affected?
• Why does it matter?
• What should the reader do now?
• What is the official source?
• What is your practical interpretation?

3. Separate news articles from evergreen tutorials

This is important. A tutorial can be updated and useful, but that does not automatically make it news. For example:

4. Use a consistent news article format

Use the same structure so Google and readers can understand the pattern of your news content:

1. Headline: clear, factual and not clickbait.
2. Quick answer: one short paragraph explaining what changed.
3. What changed: describe the actual update.
4. Who is affected: explain the audience.
5. What to do now: give a practical checklist.
6. Official source: link to Microsoft, Google, Cloudflare, Joomla or another authoritative source.
7. SokolovTech view: add your practical engineering interpretation.

This is where your site can be strong. You do not need to compete with large newsrooms on breaking news. You can compete on practical technical interpretation.

What Google News looks for

Google says content from publishers that follows its content policies is automatically eligible for consideration in Google News and across news surfaces. Google has also said sites are automatically considered for Google News and news surfaces in Search, with no application required. That does not guarantee traffic, but it means your focus should be eligibility, quality and trust rather than manual submission.

Make your blog genuinely newsworthy

Not every blog post is a news article. A “how to” tutorial, evergreen guide or opinion piece can be valuable, but Google News is more likely to surface content that behaves like news: timely, original, clearly sourced and relevant to a current topic.

Good content candidates

• Original industry news or local news.
• Timely updates about technology, policy, security or infrastructure changes.
• Event coverage with original context.
• Technical analysis of a current change, release or incident.
• Interviews or firsthand reporting.
• Data-backed explainers tied to a current issue.

Weak candidates

• Thin posts rewritten from other sites.
• Affiliate-heavy articles pretending to be news.
• Old evergreen tutorials with a new date added.
• Promotional company updates with no broader reader value.
• AI-generated summaries with no original reporting, expertise or added analysis.

Technical setup checklist

Your technical setup does not guarantee Google News visibility, but poor technical health can prevent content from being discovered or trusted.

• Verify your site in Google Search Console.
• Make sure article pages are indexable.
• Use clean, descriptive URLs.
• Use one canonical URL per article.
• Keep article title, H1 and structured data consistent.
• Show visible author names and publication dates.
• Use an author page or clear author bio where possible.
• Maintain an About page, Contact page and editorial identity.
• Keep the site mobile-friendly and fast enough for readers.
• Use HTTPS.
• Fix crawl errors, soft 404s and indexing problems in Search Console.

Use structured data correctly

Structured data helps Google understand the content of a page. Google recommends JSON-LD as one supported format for structured data. It also warns that structured data must represent the visible content on the page and does not guarantee a rich result.

Article or NewsArticle?

Use the most accurate type for the page. For ordinary blog tutorials, BlogPosting or Article may be more appropriate. For timely news-style reporting, NewsArticle can make sense if the page actually behaves like a news article.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "headline": "Example News Article Title",
  "datePublished": "2026-07-08T09:00:00+10:00",
  "dateModified": "2026-07-08T09:30:00+10:00",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Author Name"
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Publication Name"
  }
}

Use a Google News sitemap where relevant

A Google News sitemap can help Google discover recent news articles faster and improve coverage of news article URLs. Google recommends using a separate sitemap for news content if you already have a normal website sitemap.

• Create a standard XML sitemap for the whole site.
• Create a separate Google News sitemap only for recent news content.
• Submit sitemaps through Google Search Console.
• Keep non-news evergreen posts out of the news sitemap.
• Validate sitemap errors in Search Console.

What to do with Publisher Center now

Publisher Center is still a Google publisher tool, but the old Google News submission workflow has changed. Do not build your strategy around manual approval, RSS section creation or waiting for a review email.

Step-by-step workflow to build automatic eligibility

This is the practical workflow I would follow for a small technical blog. It avoids the old “submit and wait” mindset and focuses on things you can actually control.

Step 1: Clean up site identity

Google News and news surfaces need trust. Your site should clearly show who publishes the content and how readers can contact you. Add or improve these pages:

• About SokolovTech.
• Contact page.
• Author page for Maxim Sokolov.
• Editorial policy or publishing standards page.
• Corrections policy, even a simple one.
• Privacy policy.

Your author page should explain your cloud, Azure, infrastructure and technical background. This matters because your best news angle is expert technical interpretation.

Step 2: Make your news category visible

Add the news category to your main navigation or a clear section of the site. Do not bury it under random blog categories. Use simple names that users understand, such as Tech News, Azure Updates or Website Security News.

Step 3: Publish a consistent series

For the first 8 to 12 weeks, publish consistently. A realistic target is one or two news-style posts per week. Avoid filler. A small number of strong, original posts is better than many low-value summaries.

Good first article ideas for SokolovTech:

• Windows 11 Energy Saver Settings Changed: What Users Should Check.
• Cloudflare WAF Rules for Small Websites: What Changed and What to Enable.
• Joomla Security Update Released: What Site Owners Should Patch.
• Azure Storage Monitoring: What Changed in Log Analytics Tables.
• Microsoft Foundry Model Availability Changes: What Azure Engineers Should Know.
• Google News Publisher Center Changed: What Blog Owners Should Do Now.

Step 4: Add article-level trust signals

Every news-style article should show:

• Visible author name.
• Published date.
• Updated date if the article changed materially.
• Official source links.
• Clear category.
• Original analysis or practical recommendation.
• No fake urgency or clickbait.

Step 5: Use the right schema

Use NewsArticle only for genuinely news-style articles. Use TechArticle, Article or BlogPosting for normal tutorials and evergreen guides. The schema should match the visible page.

Step 6: Set up sitemaps correctly

Keep your normal sitemap for all indexable content. If you publish real news regularly, add a separate Google News sitemap for recent news articles only. Google’s News sitemap documentation says to include only recent URLs for articles created in the last two days, then remove older URLs or remove the news metadata from older URLs.

Step 7: Watch Search Console

Use Google Search Console to inspect your important news articles. Check whether they are indexed, whether Google selected the correct canonical URL, and whether any crawl or structured data issues appear.

Step 8: Measure what happens

Do not expect instant Google News traffic. Track impressions, indexing, Discover/news reports if they appear, and the articles that get searched. After a few months, review which types of updates perform best and publish more of those.

Common mistakes

Useful official references

• Google Search Central: Common questions about appearing in Google News and news surfaces
• Google: Google News transitions to automatically-generated publication pages
• Google News policies
• Google: Add a Google News sitemap
• Google Search Central: Introduction to structured data
• Google Search Central: General structured data guidelines