Google News Referral Traffic Gone after CMS Upgrade
-
Hoping someone can help. I've tried the Google forum which is it's usual vacuous hole of no help.
We recently upgraded our CMS which now includes automated sitemaps (not sure if this impacts news sitemaps, though). Anyway, after rollout, we're no longer getting any traffic from Google News.
Sequence of Events:
1. Dec. 13 launch
2. Google news referral traffic stopped
3. IT tried to 'fix' and now we're getting the elusive 'publication name' message
The publication name specified in your Sitemap does not match the publication name we have for your site in our database. Please check that the publication name in your Sitemap exactly matches the publication name displayed for your articles in Google News.
4. Retested sitemap
When I retest the news sitemap, it returns 0 errors.
When I do a site:mnn.com (our website) on the Google New Homepage, new content is showing up in SERP
Yet, still no google news referral traffic.
Our news sitemap is www.mnn.com/googlenews.xml
Can someone help? We're a news site, and can't afford to lose this traffic. Would love an early Christmas present.
Thanks!!
Lisa
-
Hey Lisa,
I was just reading a post about Google News errors and I remembered your question.
This part might help?
Unknown publication name – an error that I frequently come across in troubleshooting Google News issues is an “unknown publication name” error for the Google News sitemap, which is reported in the Sitemaps section of the site’s Google Webmaster Tools profile**.** This error is triggered when the publication name used in the <name>tags in the Google News sitemap is not an exact match to the publication name in Google News’ database</name>. To determine the correct name to use do a [site:domain] search in Google News and see what publication name is displayed for the indexed pages**.**
Source: http://www.adamsherk.com/seo/the-most-common-google-news-errors/
-
Lisa,
Tough one. Sorry for the delay, had to ping a few folks.
As for the naming error, is it possible that the site was registered in Google News originally with a slightly different name? In the application form, the name of the publication is a pretty important step, and any minor difference might raise a flag. The Sitemap calls the publication "Mother Nature Network". Perhaps it was registered with something slightly different?
Another thought: Considering the site is showing up when you do a Google News Site Search, is it possible that the traffic hasn't disappeared overall, but it's just not being properly attributed in Google Analytics anymore?
-
BTW, I already posted my issue in the google news publisher forum to no avail.
-
It quite literally coincided with the rollout of the new CMS. We averaged 2K visits a day from Google News and now we get nothing.
-
We recently upgraded our CMS which now includes automated sitemaps (not sure if this impacts news sitemaps, though).
How did it work previously?
Did traffic go down in general? I know there G changed the way analytics interprets image/product based searches and just changes how they were categorized (still receiving the traffic, just labeled differently)
I also recommend posting your issue here and seeing if a rep can help get it resolved.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How preproduction website is getting indexed in Google.
Hi team, Can anybody please help me to find how my preproduction website and urls are getting indexed in Google.
Technical SEO | | nlogix0 -
Referral Spam
Seem to be getting an awful lot of referral spam (Very large percentage), does it cause a problem with SEO or do search engines ignore it? Is it likely to have a negative effect? Is it a type of commercial warfare by competitors? Does anyone have any direct experience or knowledge? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoman100 -
Google Analytics Annotation
Is there a way to add annotations to the GA visitors graph? There is a YouTube tutorial on how to do this but the comments suggest is has not be rolled out yet in the US and I can't get it to work. Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
High-Traffic but Low PageRank?
Hi all, I just did a site audit, and I noticed that some of my high-traffic pages have a PR 0. The other pages on the site have PR 4 or 5, and yet the PR 0 pages are among the highest-traffic landing pages we have. This simply does not make any sense to me. Any ideas? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ClarityVentures0 -
What else: struggling with google position
Hi. I understand everyone is offering their time for free here so any advice or support is much appreciated. http://www.cytronex.com
Technical SEO | | AdamJamesCytronex
PA 44 || mR 4.6 || mT 5.73 || 986 links from 43 Root Domains
DA 33 || 3,942 links from 71 Domains We've dropped from position 25ish to position 70ish in keyword searches for 'electric bikes'. I've tried everything and I just don't understand! It's genuine content, the actual product is increasingly popular, we have several links from sites which are (well, to my mind) reasonable quality. I've only just been brought in to look at this and my lack of any SEO or web experience is not putting my boss off expecting an instant solution 😞 As I'm only just getting to grips with it, Analytics was only installed about a month ago so I can't pin point a moment when it dropped. We're consistently out-positioned by sites with lower PA/DA scores. Any insight anyone might have would be amazing! Thanks
Adam0 -
Is there any evidence that using Google Site Search will help your ranking, speed of indexing, or traffic?
I am considering using Google Site Search on our new site. I was told... "We have also seen a bump in traffic for sites when using Google Site Search because Google indexes the site more often (they claim using the paid Google Site Search has no effect on search rankings but we have also seen bumps in rankings after using it so that may just be what they have to say legally)." Is there any evidence of this? Would you recommend using Google Site Search? Thanks David
Technical SEO | | DavidButler710 -
Why did our site drop in Google rankings?
My site's URL (web address) is: http://tinyurl.com/3svn2l9 Hi there, We operate a travel site that lists numerous tours, accommodation and activities. Since 6th August 2011 we have dropped from top 10 SERP rankings of our pages to around result number 100 (page 10) and losing massive amount of visitors via Google Search. Our Yahoo and Bing rankings are still in the top10. We need your advice and quick! The last changes we have made are the following: -redirected the non-www version to the www version on the 1st August -bought advertising with a follow link in a sidebar that is being populated across the site (+4000 pages) about 2 months ago -added a blog to the website 2 weeks ago and posted 2 posts to date. Additionally, our website structure allows visitors (and bots) to see the same listings via different URLs which caused duplicate content. This has been the case since the launch of our website about 1 year ago. To prevent this duplicate content we have placed canonical tags on the individual listings pages. Why did our site all of a sudden plummet in the rankings?
Technical SEO | | Robbern0 -
Google support eTag?
Hello~ People! I have a questions regarding eTag. I know Google support If-Modified-HTTP-Header aka last modified header. I used eTag instead of last modified header. It seems like Google does support, yet here is my questions. code.google suggest as following. GData-Version: 2.0
Technical SEO | | Artience
ETag: "C0QBRXcycSp7ImA9WxRVFUk." but I used etag as following . ETag: "10cd712-eaae-b279a480" I didnt include "GData-Version: 2.0". is this mean Google may not support my etag?0