I was prompt with “there are no items to show” when I looked up for “Irish Boxing News” on Google News as a source. I can find the feed however the only thing that come out is a notification of “there are no items to show”.
I’ve seen few posts over the past years with the same issue however not everyone’s issue are the same. Like this one and this one.
Google Publisher Center Community
I figured the best place for me to ask would be Google Publisher Center Community so I tried my luck by submitting a new thread with a hope that the expert could guide me through or maybe give me some ideas for I am groping in the dark.
…So I was told
“With a quick look through your site, nothing stands out as a problem”
Chris the Platinum Product Expert highlighted a few issues which I did some tests but it doesn’t seems to be the cause of it.
Could it be the sitemap?
Something’s definitely missing, Ri suggested that I try the sitemap.
Not wasting my time I hopped on Google searched for articles related to sitemap and try to connect the dot to my Google News issue.
Since we have AIOSEO plugin I used that to created a sitemap then uploaded the file on our hosting.
I made a mistake here, in order for the GN sitemap to be populated I was supposed to submit it on Google Search Console (GSC).
Here’s the steps.
- Create a GN sitemap
- Upload it on your hosting
- Submit the sitemap on GSC.
Does that fixed the issue? No! (lol) I’m already pulling my hair at this stage.
Google News Sitemap
The cycle of searching and reading articles continue. What I can conclude from the reading, I have to actually create a dedicated “Google News Sitemap” on top of the general one which I’ve done earlier.
Questions: But how? Do I do it manually? Can I use a plugin?
I read this article from Google Developer site on how to create the news sitemap, I even watched this video on Youtube. The moment the video ended I can hear this question “Will I have to do this manually on a daily basis?” so loud in my head. *cringe*
Joke aside, I almost did that. What option do I have the when the AIOSEO are charging $200 over for a pro version.
The Search of GN Sitemap Plugin
The only thing I could do that point is to keep searching.
I found this video on how to create a Google News Sitemap. Mind you, this video is in Hindi. Yes! You read that correctly and I speak no Hindi but I can definitely read in English. So my eyes were glued to the screen watching every steps telling myself that I can do this.
I guess that effort paid off because XML Sitemap & Google News come to the rescue.
Free plugin! Voila!
To be honest I’ve had second thought at the beginning because installing this would mean that I have two plugins that that generated our sitemap. Luckily there’s an option to select only one sitemap for this plugin so I opted for the Google News sitemap instead.
I did the three magic steps and I’m over the moon when I saw the successful status on GSC. It’s even better when our feed on Google News starts to fire up.
Things moved smoothly but the feed stop updating on the second day. It’s frustrating after I’ve tried every possible source just to come to this, I’m at my wit’s end.
What now?! What…?
I can’t give up. Can I? Never! or Maybe not yet. lol
WordPress Support page
Went to WordPress Support page, XML Sitemap & Google News‘s to be specific.
Created a new thread regarding to my issue and to be honest I was quite impressed by the response from the plugin author.
He (assuming from the name and picture) helped me to check our site and come out with a suggestion regarding to the cache.
I was told that I need to make sure the following are checked and fixed.
- There’s only 1 caching plugin on my WP. More than 1 caches running at the same time will make things hard to debug
- There is an exclusion rule for the Google News sitemap on the caching settings.
I did as per his suggestion and the issue was fixed. Our feed starts to refresh to the latest articles again.
Been monitoring on Google News feed and sitemap status on GSC for few days and I can say that it’s all ok now.
I can finally take a breather and get the burden off my shoulder.
Google News Feed: There are no items to show – no more.