Google News Author Search and SEO Tips for Authors

Launched recently, Google News now allows you to search by author.  How? Simply enter a search query similar to

author:”Kevin Pang”

Example: http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=author%3A%22Kevin+Pang%22

or

author:”James Janega”

Example: http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=author%3A%22James+Janega%22

Why/how is this useful?

If you have your writers sign up for the RSS feed of their name (bottom left corner of G’News) then they can start to see a pattern of how quickly their stories are added to Google News.  If a story they write doesn’t get added to Google News after a normal amount of time, they can investigate as to why this may have been the case and correct the issue or make note of it for future articles.

Editorial reasons why Google News may not pick up a story:

• Article date
• Article text
• Article title

Technical reasons why Google News may not pickup a story:

• Article URLs
• Different domains
• Drop-down menus
• Dynamic content
• Embedded JavaScript text
• Flash, graphic/image or JavaScript links
• Forum URLs
• Frames
• Languages and encoding
• Links to your articles
• Multimedia content
• Non-permanent section pages
• PDF and other non-HTML formats
• Registration/subscription sites
• URL errors