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Ever wonder why Google didn’t index your hot story about the local city council scandal? Why does Google News pick up some of your news websites’ posts and not others?

You’re not alone. I’ve heard many people ask these questions, and, apparently, so has Google.

The search engine giant has revealed some secrets and dispelled some myths as to how they include and rank articles in Google News. Read through the list below and then head over to Google’s support group for an ongoing discussion about experiences with Google News. Official Googlers will be responding to questions during the next few days, according to a Google News post.

Google News Myths:

Having an image next to your article improves your ranking

Timing the publication of your article improves your article ranking

There’s no way to see why your articles weren’t included in Google News

• Google says you can analyze reasons with Webmaster tools

Publishing a sitemap helps your rankings

AdSense on my site will improve your article rankings

Google News Facts:

Updating an article after posting it will create problems with Google News

Articles that are just images or video won’t be included

Redesigning my site may affect your coverage in Google News

MAIN POINTS

Andy Kruse at State of Local highlighted a couple observations from the announcement that are important to take away:

1) Google News only visits a story once. It never comes back to check for updates … Our recommendation would be that if the news significantly changes — headline and nut graph — it’s best to create a new story with a new URL and link to the previous one(s) for context.

2) Being first doesn’t matter. Rather, it only matters for the first minute, if you’re the exclusive. After that, Google’s looking for the best story, and it shows no preference to who published first (or most recently).

NOTE ON IMAGES IN STORIES

Just because Google says images in your posts won’t necessarily get your stories indexed in Google News does not mean you shouldn’t strive to include images whenever possible with your stories. Although web readers are mostly looking for text, visual elements help break up all the text on your pages and help readers move through a story. Also, captions include some of the most-read text on any page. It’s incredibly important to include relevant information in photo captions on your stories. If not just for SEO, include photos for your readers.

I’m sure you have more questions – so join the discussion with Google !

If you find out anything interesting, please let me know too!