How to Create a News Sitemap: Tags, the 1,000-Entry Limit and the Two-Day Rule

What Is a News Sitemap?

A news sitemap is an XML sitemap that carries Google's news tags for articles published in the last two days, so that Google News can find new articles quickly.

Google says publishers can add the news tags to an existing sitemap or create a separate sitemap just for news, and that either is fine (Google Search Central). The underlying protocol, its general limits and what a sitemap cannot do are covered in our definition, what is an XML sitemap. This guide is the hands-on version for a publisher or newsroom that runs its own site. It is not a way into Google News: Google says it discovers news content algorithmically and no application is needed (Publisher Center Help), as explained in how to set up a publication in Google News Publisher Center.

How to Create a News Sitemap at a Glance

Time: an hour or two to configure a CMS feature or script, then minutes per check (our estimate). Tools: a CMS sitemap feature or a short script, a text editor, Google Search Console. Cost: none for the file; developer time if the CMS needs a custom feed. Skill level: intermediate (basic XML).

What You Need Before Starting

• A site that publishes dated news articles. Google's page is written for news publishers. It does not say whether a corporate newsroom of press releases benefits; for an owned newsroom, our recommendation, not a Google rule, is an ordinary XML sitemap with accurate lastmod dates (see how to create an online newsroom).
• The publication name as Google News shows it. Google says news:name must exactly match the name on your articles on news.google.com, without anything in parentheses (Google Search Central). Google News now takes publication titles from your site name, not from a name typed into Publisher Center.
• The original publication timestamp for every article, stored in your CMS with its time zone.
• A verified Search Console property for the site, to submit the file and read the Sitemaps report.
• A way to rebuild the file automatically. A hand-edited file is hard to keep inside a two-day window.

Step 1: Choose a Combined or a Separate News Sitemap

Google accepts both: news tags added to your existing sitemap, or a sitemap used only for news. It says a separate news sitemap “may enable better tracking” of your content in Search Console (Google Search Central). Process: decide where the news tags will live and give that file a permanent URL, such as /news-sitemap.xml. Expected result: one named file. Verify: the main sitemap still lists every article you want indexed, old and new. Common mistake: deleting old articles from the main sitemap because the news file only keeps two days. Our recommendation, not a Google rule: use a separate file, so the two-day clean-up touches one file and leaves the main sitemap alone.

Step 2: Select Only Articles From the Last Two Days

Google's instruction is direct: “Only include recent URLs for articles that were created in the last two days” (Google Search Central). Use fully qualified, absolute URLs, because Google crawls them as listed (Google Search Central), and list the canonical address where an article has more than one.

Process: query the CMS for published articles whose original publication time falls in the window. Expected result: a short list of canonical URLs. Verify: no URL redirects or returns an error. Common mistake: including updated old articles because their modified date is recent. Google's page does not say whether two days means 48 hours or two calendar days; we suggest 48 hours from the publication timestamp. That is our reading, not a documented rule.

Step 3: Declare the Namespaces and Write the Six Required Tags

A news sitemap is a standard sitemap with an added namespace, http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9 (Google Search Central). The file must be UTF-8 encoded and tag values must be entity escaped, so an ampersand in a title is written & (Google Search Central). A minimal file, with illustrative values on example.com:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/news/council-approves-budget</loc>
    <news:news>
      <news:publication>
        <news:name>The Example Times</news:name>
        <news:language>en</news:language>
      </news:publication>
      <news:publication_date>2026-10-11T09:30:00-04:00</news:publication_date>
      <news:title>Council Approves Budget</news:title>
    </news:news>
  </url>
</urlset>

Google lists six required tags (Google Search Central):

Older tutorials also show news:keywords, news:genres and news:stock_tickers. Google's current page does not list them, so we leave them out. If the same pages carry image, video or hreflang tags, Google's combine page says to declare each namespace in the urlset and add the tags one after the other (Google Search Central). Verify: the file opens in a browser as XML without errors. Common mistake: an unescaped ampersand in a headline, which breaks the whole file.

Step 4: Refresh the Same File and Drop Old Entries

Google says to add new articles to the existing news sitemap as they are published, not to create a new sitemap with each update, and that Google News crawls news sitemaps as often as the rest of the site (Google Search Central). Once an article is past two days, Google gives two options: remove its URL from the news sitemap, or keep the URL and remove its news:news block.

Process: rebuild the file on publish and on a schedule, for example hourly. Expected result: the file always holds the last two days. Verify: the oldest news:publication_date is no more than two days old. Common mistake: worrying about an empty file on a quiet weekend. Google says an Empty Sitemap warning in Search Console only checks that the emptiness was intentional and causes no problems for Search (Google Search Central).

Step 5: Stay Under 1,000 News Tags, Splitting if Needed

A news sitemap can hold up to 1,000 news:news tags; above that, Google says to split it into several smaller sitemaps (Google Search Central). The general limits still apply: “All formats limit a single sitemap to 50MB (uncompressed) or 50,000 URLs” (Google Search Central). To group the parts, list them in a sitemap index file, which may hold up to 50,000 loc tags. The referenced sitemaps must be on the same site as the index and in its directory or lower, and Search Console accepts up to 500 index files per site (Google Search Central).

The chart shows that the news cap is one fiftieth of the general limit, so a busy news file reaches its ceiling long before any standard sitemap would. By our arithmetic, a site keeping two days of articles reaches 1,000 entries at an average of 500 articles a day; most company newsrooms will never come close. Verify: count the news:news tags in each file. Common mistake: splitting by count while still leaving old articles in, which only hides a clean-up failure.

Step 6: Publish the File and Submit It Once

Google recommends posting sitemaps at the site root, where they can affect every file on the site. It lists three ways to submit: the Sitemaps report in Search Console, the Search Console API, or a line in robots.txt, with no limit on the number of sitemap lines (Google Search Central):

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/news-sitemap.xml

Pinging is no longer an option. Google announced in June 2023 that its sitemaps ping endpoint was going away, and that requests to it would return a 404 error (Google Search Central Blog). Because the file keeps the same URL, it is submitted once and then updated in place. The submission steps for both Google and Bing are in how to submit a sitemap to Google and Bing. Expected result: the file appears in the Sitemaps report. Common mistake: leaving a CMS plugin that pings the old endpoint and assuming it does something; Google says it does nothing useful.

How to Verify It Worked

• Fetched: Search Console's Sitemaps report shows “when Googlebot accessed the sitemap” and any processing errors (Google Search Central).
• Current: every news:publication_date is within two days and matches the date shown on the article.
• Under the cap: each file holds 1,000 news:news tags or fewer.
• Named correctly: news:name matches the name on news.google.com character for character.
• Indexed: spot-check a recent article with the URL Inspection tool. Google's Publisher Center help points to URL Inspection for checking individual URLs (Publisher Center Help).

Passing these checks shows the file is well formed and current. It does not show that any article was indexed, shown or ranked.

Common Problems and Fixes

What Not to Do

• Do not create a new sitemap file with each update. Consequence: Google tells publishers not to. Correction: keep one stable URL and rewrite its contents.
• Do not leave articles tagged after two days. Consequence: the file breaks Google's guidance and runs toward the 1,000 cap. Correction: remove the URL or its news:news block.
• Do not rely on priority or changefreq. Consequence: none; Google ignores both values (Google Search Central). Correction: keep lastmod accurate in the main sitemap instead.
• Do not treat a sitemap entry as coverage. Consequence: false confidence. Google calls submission “merely a hint” (Google Search Central). Correction: judge an article by whether it is indexed and live, not by whether a file lists it.
• Do not use a news sitemap to dress up paid content. Consequence: a sponsored post is advertising whichever file lists it, and Google News requires sponsorship to be clear to readers (see what Google News requires of sponsored content). Correction: label and disclose it, with links marked sponsored or nofollow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Methodology

This guide is built from Google Search Central's documentation on news sitemaps, building and submitting sitemaps, sitemap index files and combining extensions, Google's 2023 announcement on the ping endpoint and one Publisher Center help page, all read on October 11, 2026. The news sitemap page shows a last-updated date of December 10, 2025, and the build page July 8, 2026. House recommendations are labeled in the text: a separate news file, the 48-hour reading of “two days”, rebuilding on a schedule and using an ordinary sitemap for a company newsroom. The 500-articles-a-day figure and the time estimate are ours. We did not submit a test sitemap or observe how Google News processes one, and Google's pages do not say how “two days” is measured or whether corporate newsrooms benefit.

1. official Google Search Central, News sitemaps. Required tags, namespace, 1,000-tag cap, two-day rule, update and empty-sitemap guidance. Updated December 10, 2025. Read October 11, 2026.
2. official Google Search Central, Build and submit a sitemap. 50MB and 50,000-URL limits, UTF-8 and escaping, absolute URLs, root location, submission methods, “merely a hint”, priority, changefreq and lastmod, RSS and Atom limits. Updated July 8, 2026. Read October 11, 2026.
3. official Google Search Central, Manage your sitemaps with a sitemap index file. 50,000 loc tags per index, location rules, 500 index files per site. Read October 11, 2026.
4. official Google Search Central, Combine sitemap extensions. Namespaces and combining news with image, video and hreflang tags. Read October 11, 2026.
5. official Google Search Central Blog, Sitemaps ping endpoint is going away, June 26, 2023. Read October 11, 2026.
6. official Google, Help Google News discover your web crawled content, Publisher Center Help. Algorithmic discovery, sitemap speed, URL Inspection. Read October 11, 2026.