As my site has been progressing, I’ve been sharing my experiences with you so that you can learn, or maybe laugh with me. My first attempt at getting into “Google News” was met with the following response:

Issues found in “Cyber Roadmap” blocking approval on Google News

Hello “Cyber Roadmap” team,

Our team recently reviewed your publication to make it part of Google News discoverable catalogue. While reviewing your publication, we noticed the following issue that prevent us from making it discoverable:

• Web Locations 
  • Section missing content Check your section and web location URL. An example of a section that’s missing content is:  “Cyber Roadmap” 

Take the necessary steps to resolve these issues and consult our Help Center on how to set up compliant  sections, and create compliant feeds. To get started, access your publication at https://publishercenter.google.com/publications/

Once you have resolved all pending issues resubmit your content via the Publisher Center. We also suggest visiting the Google News Forum to connect with other publishers who might be facing similar issues and can help you further.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Next Steps

In summary, I submitted the site with a “content” area – the main homepage – which didn’t show in the preview. I was curious if Google would take the time to help, or if I would need to figure it out on my own.

I’ll be figuring it out on my own. However, I do know that my rss feed is showing up properly in the preview of the second “content” area. So, I’ve re-submitted the site with just the rss feed, and we’ll see what happens on the second approval attempt. Overall, the first attempt took about 3-4 days from submission to review. Google says it could take “2-4 weeks”.

I’m curious to see if the site will be approved “as is” since it has only been up for about two weeks with about 14 total articles.

Plus, right now I’m using a DNS re-write on the domain (trying to mask the wordpress domain, and the rss feed only works for the Google News preview if I use the WordPress domain without the re-write.

An interesting test, and I’ll let you know how it turns out!