Google Clarifies Googlebot-News Crawler Documentation via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google updated their Google News crawler documentation to correct an error that implied that publisher crawler preferences addressed to Googlebot-News influenced the News tab in Google search.

Google News Tab

The Google News tab is a category of search that is displayed near the top of the search results pages (SERPs). The news tab filter displays search results from news publishers. Content that’s shown in the news tab generally comes from sites that eligible to be displayed in Google News and must meet Google’s news content policies.

What Changed:

Google’s changelog noted that the user agent description was in error to say that publisher preferences influenced what’s shown in the Google News tab.

They explained:

“The description for how crawling preferences addressed to Googlebot-News mistakenly stated that they’d affect the News tab on Google, which is not the case.”

The entire section mentioning the News tab in Google Search was removed from this sentence:

“Crawling preferences addressed to the Googlebot-News user agent affect all surfaces of Google News (for example, the News tab in Google Search and the Google News app).”

The corrected version now reads:

“Crawling preferences addressed to the Googlebot-News user agent affect the Google News product, including news.google.com and the Google News app.”

Read the updated Googlebot-News user agent documentation here:

Googlebot News

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