David Stansbury KB3KAI

Free download: Google News Sitemap Generator for WordPress

** This is not a WP plug-in, but is a stand-alone script for generating a sitemap RSS feed for Google News.

UPDATE March 10, 2008 - I fixed the invalid date format error bug.

Google announced their new Sitemaps for Google News program on November 21, 2006. I checked it out and the protocol is fairly standard and simple to follow. See the URL above for more information and technical specs.

I modified a simple, standard sitemap generator script (author URL dead) to output a Google News sitemap feed. All you need to do is download and unzip the file (below), open the php file with a standard text editor, modify the categories keywords list (click here for a list of available categories), and upload to your main WordPress directory.

You call up the script directly to generate the Google News sitemap file on-demand. For this site, the URL is http://www.kb3kai.com/david_stansbury/news-sitemap.php.

Once you have the program uploaded and running properly, you need to submit the feed URL to Google. Simply sign into (or sign up for) Google Webmaster Tools and, if your site is already considered a news source by Google, simply submit your feed URL as shown below:

If your site is not in Google News you can request inclusion here.

Download the WordPress script here, verified to work in WordPress 2.0: Google News Sitemap Generator for WordPress

UPDATE March 19, 2008 - I used this script on a live Google-News-worthy website and submitted to Google Webmaster Tools as a Google News sitemap feed. They seem to have accepted it okay, see the screen shot below.

Have fun and happy publishing!

- Dave

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