Google News Checker

Choose the right lookup

Start with the question you need to answer. By query searches a subject or phrase. By entity opens the feed for a specific Knowledge Graph ID, which helps distinguish namesakes. Topic accepts a category, token or Google News topic link. Story opens the coverage attached to a story token. The feed modes use the request and result formats documented by Scrapering’s Google News API.

A Google News check answers a specific research question: does Google’s News RSS search currently return publications for this domain? D2TR runs a domain-based lookup and brings the feed, count and latest headlines into one view. You can start with a website address, then open the underlying source to inspect the evidence yourself.

This is a useful snapshot of public visibility. It is not an approval certificate or a complete inventory of indexed pages. Google says publishers do not need to submit a site to be considered for its news surfaces, and recommends a site: search when checking a domain. See Google’s guidance on discovering news content.

Reading a result

Found / not found

Whether the returned RSS feed contains publications. A failed request is reported separately from a completed check with no matches.

Publication count

The number of items returned in this feed at check time. It does not represent lifetime coverage, readership or a publisher’s total output.

Recent publications

Headlines, source labels and available publication dates. Open the articles to check their relevance and recency.

RSS and Google News

Direct links to the evidence behind the result. These are useful when reviewing an unexpected count or sharing a finding with a colleague.

Feed articles and publishers

The article list includes available authors, images and dates. Publisher counts and bars describe this returned sample; they are not traffic estimates.

Stories and related topics

These are the clusters and suggestions explicitly returned for the feed. Open a cluster to load its coverage, or a related topic to continue your research.

Keep the request context with your notes. A later check may produce a different feed as stories are published and results change. Compare like-for-like snapshots rather than treating one number as a permanent property of the publisher.

Follow a topic into a story

Explore a subject

Choose a query, entity or topic, then select a country and one of its available languages. Every check requests the maximum feed size for the past 7 days. An entity ID by itself does not specify a Google News edition.

1. Read the feed. Compare headlines and sources. Query words are highlighted in the returned titles.
2. Inspect a story. In the Stories view, choose Analyze story to request that cluster’s coverage. Return to the previous feed without running it again.
3. Compare publishers. Open Publishers to see how the returned articles are distributed. Choose a publisher to filter the article list.
4. Save the evidence. Download CSV for the article list or JSON for the feed, clusters, related topics and request settings.

Creating a feed check uses one of ten daily requests, checked against both IP and browser. Reading its result does not start another check. An entity feed may contain articles without story clusters; an empty Stories or Related topics view means those fields were not returned, not that the subject has no coverage.

Audit a publisher list

1. Start with one domain. Paste a hostname or website URL and run Check Google News. The tool normalizes the host for you.
2. Inspect the evidence. Read the latest headlines and open the RSS or Google News link. Confirm that the sources belong to the publisher you intended.
3. Expand to a list. Add up to 100 domains, one per line. Use the result filters to separate matches, missing publications and failed checks.
4. Save a useful snapshot. Export the list as CSV and record when you checked it. Investigate error rows before interpreting them as missing visibility.

For recurring internal reports, the API above returns the same kind of data in JSON. Keep each domain’s result and error separately so that a temporary failure for one publisher does not distort the rest of your report.

When to use it

Story and topic research

Use an entity feed to follow a person or organization without relying only on a name. Explore story clusters to compare headline angles, publication times and the sources represented in the returned coverage. Treat author names as article metadata, not as a list of the people involved in the event.

Publisher research

Review a group of publishers before a competitive analysis. The recent headlines provide context that a yes/no list misses: what they are publishing about and whether the returned stories are relevant to your research.

Editorial and technical checks

After publishing or changing a site, check whether recent articles appear in the feed. Use an unexpected result to start an investigation with your editorial and technical teams, then validate the cause with the site’s own data.

Partner and outreach lists

Use bulk checks to add a public visibility signal to an existing publisher list. Combine it with a manual review of content and fit. A feed match alone does not establish editorial quality or make a site a suitable partner.

Where to investigate next

Google describes news ranking as algorithmic, with factors including relevance, freshness, authoritativeness, usability, location and language. A count cannot explain how those factors affected an individual article. The official Google News ranking guide is the appropriate starting point for that distinction.

If you own the site, use the Google News performance report in Search Console to inspect clicks, impressions and click-through rate from news.google.com and the Google News apps. Traffic from the News tab in Google Search is covered separately in the Search performance report.

Also check the publisher’s identity with Creators Profile Search. It answers a different question: which public profile, social accounts and entity details can be found for that publisher.