Currated Brief

Fast news pages win twice. Readers stay longer, and search visibility holds up better. For publishers, core web vitals news sites work isn’t a side task in 2026, it’s part of getting the story on screen without friction. The good news is simple. The thresholds haven’t changed. The bad news is just as simple. News sites still break them in the same places, hero images, ad slots, consent banners,…

What can tank a news site’s visibility faster than a weak headline? A bad robots.txt file. For publishers, one line can block breaking stories, image folders, or whole section pages just when Google needs them most. That makes robots.txt on news sites far less forgiving than it is on a small brochure site. The cost is not just web search traffic. It can also weaken Google News pickup and slow…

If your best work sits behind a subscription, paywalled content SEO can feel like selling through frosted glass. People can sense value, but they still need a clear view before they commit. The good news is that ranking paywalled pages in 2026 is still very possible. The trick is simple in theory, but easy to get wrong in practice. Show enough to earn the click, mark the page clearly for Google,…

If your newsroom content is a shop window, news publisher schema is the price tag, the product label, and the receipt all at once. It tells Google what the page is, who wrote it, when it went live, and which organisation stands behind it. In March 2026, the good news is this: the Schema.org types used by publishers have stayed steady. The bad news is also this: small mistakes (wrong dates,…

Live blogs are exciting because they feel like a heartbeat on a page. Readers refresh for the next update, Google keeps checking for changes, and your team races to stay accurate. The problem is that live blog SEO can fall apart fast if your setup is messy. In 2026, the winners aren’t only the quickest publishers. They’re the ones with a page that loads fast, updates cleanly, and stays easy to…

If you publish news, news sitemap setup is one of those jobs that quietly decides whether Google finds your story fast, or finds it days late. That’s the difference between riding the spike and missing it. In 2026, the rules are still strict, but the workflow is simple once you set it up right. You’ll create a News sitemap that only lists recent articles, validate it, submit it in Search…

You publish a post, share it, and then wait. And wait. Meanwhile, search traffic stays flat because the page hasn’t been picked up yet. That’s why indexnow setup is such a relief for busy publishers in 2026. Instead of hoping crawlers find your new or updated URLs, you can notify participating search engines straight away. This guide gives you a practical, publisher-focused checklist: what…

Getting into Top Stories can feel like trying to get backstage at a sold-out gig. You might have great content, yet still get turned away at the door. In March 2026, the door staff is still the same mix of trust, technical compliance, and publishing consistency. This guide breaks down Google Top Stories eligibility into what you can control this week: your editorial signals, your site setup, and…

Syndication can feel like free distribution, until your “copy” outranks your original. In 2026, news gets republished faster than ever across partner sites, newsletters, and aggregator feeds, so canonical tag setup has become the safety belt you can’t skip. Get it right and Google consolidates signals (links, relevance, trust) on the page you actually want to rank. Get it wrong and you invite…

If your content strategy still assumes every search ends with a click, 2026 will feel like a rude awakening. ChatGPT Search often answers the question inside the chat, then shows a small set of citations. That changes what “winning” looks like. The good news is you can influence whether you get cited, recommended, and trusted. This guide turns ChatGPT search SEO into a practical checklist you…

A newsroom without a plan feels like a kitchen at peak service with no tickets. Everyone’s moving, nobody’s sure what’s next, and the best ideas arrive too late. A newsroom content calendar fixes that, fast, as long as it’s built for how news actually works (deadlines, approvals, fast pivots, and clear ownership). The goal isn’t a pretty spreadsheet. It’s a living system your team can run again…

If Google search feels like a list of links, Perplexity feels more like a research assistant with a highlighter. It reads, compares, then cites a short list of sources inside a single answer. That changes the goal for publishers: you’re not only trying to rank, you’re trying to be chosen as evidence. This Perplexity-focused publishing checklist is built for 2026 realities: fast answers, visible…

An AI-created illustration of a newsroom site where robots.txt decisions can either open the door to indexing or block it entirely. One tiny text file can make your breaking news vanish. That’s not drama, it’s robots.txt publishers reality in March 2026. When robots.txt goes wrong, the fallout looks like a silent outage. New URLs don’t appear in Search, older stories slide out of Google News…

Getting your stories into Google News can feel like trying to get into a busy nightclub with no bouncer. You can’t just wave and walk in, you need the right signals, the right presentation, and a site that looks trustworthy. In 2026, Google News Publisher Center still matters, but not in the way many publishers think. This guide explains what it does now, what you must set up outside it, and the…