How Google Play Newsstand Producer accesses other sites

About Google Play Newsstand

The Google Play Newsstand app allows mobile phone and tablet users to view existing content optimized for their devices. Publishers can provide this content as "editions" using Google Play Newsstand Producer. When our service accesses other sites, it can be identified by the user-agent GoogleProducer.

Access triggers and methods

Google Play Newsstand Producer accesses third-party sites when a user subscribes to the site's RSS feed in Google Play Newsstand, or when a publisher creates an edition that incorporates content from that site's RSS feed.

Google Play Newsstand Producer accesses sites in the following manner:

• Producer issues a HEAD request for each post in the original feed. This request does not retrieve content; it is used to resolve any redirects for the post URL.
• Producer retrieves any images or other media whose URLs are incorporated into the feed's content.
• Producer retrieves the favicon for each site whose content is included in the feed.

Sometimes, a publisher may create an edition that retrieves content from an RSS feed's source articles. This retrieval is only performed once the publisher has verified their ownership of the content via Google Search Console. In this case, Google Play Newsstand Producer does the following:

• Producer retrieves the source articles included in the feed from the original site, as well as any media included in the source articles.

A publisher may also create an edition that retrieves content from a Media RSS feed. If a feed is configured as a Media RSS feed within Google Play Newsstand Producer, that feed and its contents will be retrieved directly.

Frequency

The frequency with which Google Play Newsstand Producer will access these sites varies, from once per hour to once every 24 hours.