Google: When it comes to crawling news sites, it focuses on news sitemaps and hub pages

October 10, 2022

When crawling news websites, Google focuses on news sitemaps and so-called hub pages: These include the homepage and category pages.

For news websites in particular, it is important that new content finds its way into the search results of Google and Google News as quickly as possible. So that Google can record new content at short notice, the focus when crawling news websites is on news sitemaps and so-called hub pages. These are the home page and category pages.

By crawling these pages, Google can quickly pick up new links, as John Mueller explained in the March 5 Google Search Central SEO Office Hours.

According to Müller, if you want to increase the importance of other pages, such as older news, for Google, you should ensure that there are appropriate internal links and link the pages, for example, in the page navigation or in the footer.

For news websites in particular, but also for other types of websites, it is therefore important to pay attention to a website structure that enables Google to recognize new pages and new links as easily as possible. This includes links on the homepage and on the category pages, but also an up-to-date sitemap or news sitemap.