Google’s revamped version of Google News added new features, along with a complete redesign, but it removed a number of things as well.
Several features, tags, and schema guidelines were removed with the launch of the new Google News. A Google representative has released details about the exact features that were deprecated.
From a statement in the Google News help forum:
“With the launch of the new Google News, we re-evaluated some features, tags, and schema guidelines which were built over many years for publishers. While we are keeping and evolving certain features, we have also deprecated others.
Our goal is to engage the publisher community with features that bring substantial value to both our publishers and our users. Some of the underlying ideas for these deprecated features may show up in new ways in the future.”
The deprecated features include:
- Editor’s Picks
- Standout and original-source tags
- Ability to highlight mobile apps in the Google News Publisher Center
- News crawl error tool in Search Console
Going forward, Google News publishers will no longer be informed by Search Console about errors such as an article being too short or too long, off-site redirects, date not found, and other news-specific errors.
Google’s representative goes on to note the company decided to keep a couple of features which are similar to other features that have been removed — specifically the ‘opinion’ and ‘satire’ tags in Google News articles.
It was also revealed that the company is still working on new features for Google News which will be shared in the future.
