A news sitemap is a specialised XML sitemap for publishers. It lists only recent articles — those published in the last two days — and feeds them to Google News, where freshness is everything. It is a fast lane, not a replacement for your regular sitemap.
What makes it different
- Recency window — only include articles from the past 48 hours. Remove them as they age out.
- Publication details — each entry names the publication and the article's publish date and title.
- Frequent updates — because the window is short, the file is rebuilt constantly as you publish.
What an entry looks like
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/news/harbour-reopens</loc>
<news:news>
<news:publication>
<news:name>Example Times</news:name>
<news:language>en</news:language>
</news:publication>
<news:publication_date>2026-06-21</news:publication_date>
<news:title>Harbour reopens after repairs</news:title>
</news:news>
</url>
</urlset>Most sites don't need one
News sitemaps only help sites accepted into Google News. If you are not a news publisher, a standard XML
sitemap with accurate lastmod
dates is the right tool.
Keep reading
What is an XML sitemap?
How the XML sitemap protocol works, what each tag means, and why search engines rely on it to crawl your site.
Video sitemaps explained
Describe the videos you host — title, duration, thumbnail — so search engines can index and preview them.
Submitting your sitemap to search engines
Where to put your sitemap and how to hand it to Google and Bing so your pages get discovered faster.
HTML sitemaps explained
The human-facing cousin of the XML sitemap: a single page that links to everything, helping both visitors and crawlers.