Google News Showcase was officially announced last October as an experience for publishers to show news in Google. Well, now it is expanding in many ways including paywalled content for free, a News Showcase panels from suggested publications, News Showcase will expand to show on news.google.com and on Discover. And most exciting for me is that News Showcase metrics will come to Google Search Console.
Search Console News Showcase
Yes, Google wrote "News Showcase metrics will soon appear in Search Console so publishers will have more data to better understand which articles and topics users are responding to." I assume this means there will be a filter in the performance report to see metrics such as impressions, clicks, CTR, etc. But I also suspect Google will be offering debugging reports to show errors you have with implementing news for News Showcase. We will see, I have yet to see anyone notice anything new in Search Console around this.
Paywalled Content
Google looks like it will pay some publishers to give searchers access to all or partial paywalled content. Google said it is going to be "offering people access to paywalled content in partnership with select news publishers." Here is how it might look like:
Google News Showcase Panel
Google is launching a new interface named the News Showcase panel. This panel includes a list of important articles selected daily by their favorite publishers. Google gave this example, "if a user follows a news outlet that covers their local news, they will see daily updates on the most important local stories, selected by that newsroom. Relevant publications, both national and local, will also now be shown within the For You feed, plus in a dedicated area to discover new News Showcase publications within Newsstand on Google News."
Here is what this may look like:
Expanding To More Google
Google said it will show the News Showcase in more places including news.google.com and Google Discover. Google said "on top of these updates to improve News Showcase, we’re bringing quality news content to even more people. News Showcase has expanded to Google News on iOS and it will be coming to news.google.com and Discover soon."
How To Get In To News Showcase
How do you get your web site into Google News Showcase? Well, you can't, not yet. It seems to be limited to select publishers. Google wrote here "Google News Showcase starts with publishers in a number of countries and regions around the globe, with more to follow soon." Google said this week that there are "close to 400 news publications" on this program.
So you might need to know someone to get in...
Forum discussion at Twitter & WebmasterWorld.
