Labels are a set of predefined terms that describe the content of different parts of your news site and serve as hints to Google to help classify your content. We hope to provide useful ways for users to access the information they need despite the rapid changes in content creation worldwide.
Sometimes, label application is informed by publisher selection of appropriate tags in Publisher Center, or by the application of tags in HTML markup. Google may or may not choose to apply labels algorithmically if our systems determine that your content qualifies for a particular label type.
Important: If you think a particular label doesn't apply to your site, contact the Google News team. We continually add new labels to help users understand and select the content they want to read. Labels that aren't listed in this article are applied algorithmically.
When to apply labels
When you view our record of your publication in Publisher Center, select all labels that apply to the content on your site or parts of your site.
You can apply labels in a few different ways:
- Add domain level labels if they apply to all content that you publish. For example, theonion.com would label the entire domain as satire.
- To denote your "Opinion" or "Satire" sections, apply labels at a section level. For example, pennlive.com/opinion would only label that section within pennlive.com as opinion.
- To add multiple labels to a single section, add the section multiple times.
Types of labels
Important: These labels are suggestions that helps Google classify your content better. If our algorithms deem them irrelevant, they may not show up against your content on news surfaces.
Below are examples of label types:
Publishers that have identified themselves as satire may appear with a "Satire" label next to their publication name on Google News. Apply this label at the domain level you primarily publish satirical content. You can also apply this label to a particular section URL of your site.
Publishers that have identified themselves with this label might have "User-generated" appear next to their publication name in Google News. Apply this label to your publication if you primarily publish newsworthy user-generated content which has already gone through a formal editorial review process on your site. You can also apply this label to a particular section URL of your site.
Publishers that have identified themselves with this label might have "Press release" appear next to their publication name in Google News. If you primarily publish press releases on your site or within a domain (ex. www.kodak.com/lk/en/corp/press_center), apply this label to your domain. You can also apply this label to a particular section URL of your site.
Publishers that have identified themselves as blogs might appear with a "Blog" label next to their publication name in Google News. If you primarily publish newsworthy blogs, apply this label to your domain. You can also apply this label to a particular section URL of your site
Add & manage labels
To help Google identify the type of content you produce, you can associate these labels to your content labels, at either the domain or section level. Learn more about how to manage content labels.
A label can't be removed from a content label. If you wish to delete a label you need to delete the content label it's associated with. Learn more about how to delete content labels.
Fact check
This label applies to published stories with fact-checked content that's indicated by the schema.org ClaimReview markup, like round-up stories that contain multiple fact check analyses within a single article. Google News may apply this label to your content if you published stories that contain fact-checked content. The "fact check" label helps users find fact check content in major stories.
To determine if you should use this tag in your article, use the fact check criteria below:
- Discrete, addressable claims and checks are easily identified in the body of the article. Readers should be able to understand what was checked and what conclusions were reached.
- Analysis must be traceable and transparent about sources and methods, with citations and references to primary sources.
- Article titles must indicate that a claim is under review, state the conclusions reached, or simply frame that the article contains fact-checked content.
- Sites with fact-checked content must have several fact check articles marked up.
If we find sites that don't follow those criteria for the ClaimReview markup, we may either ignore that site's markup or remove the site from Google News.
To learn more about how to use the markup, visit the Google Developers fact-check page.