[RavanH]

Yes, meta keywords is largely ignored at this point. We kept it because it is still demanded by users…

We’re considering other features, which you can vote for here if you wish 🙂

[RavanH]

One question: could you go to Settings > Google News > License tab, then select “Check license” and hit Save, then let me know if you get an error message that says “An error occurred, please try again.”? I wonder if there is some kind of problem reaching the update server from your site…

About the plugin updates: there is one coming soon that does include some updates to the plugin self-updater routines but I’m not aware of a fix for any admin slowdown. Nor did we get any other reports about this, so that is why I wonder if there is something else going wrong.

Still, I can send you the development version if you are willing to test it. It would help us figure out if there is something that needs to be done before release 🙂

Please let me know!

[RavanH]

Hi Paul Johan, thank you for sharing the info about the slowdowns. We’re looking into it right now and I’ll come back to you as soon as we find something.

[RavanH]

Hi Edoardo, you are not the only one encountering this problem. The Publisher Center Help forum is full of threads about it. And not just for WordPress sites. Some report that the issue “just went away” after a while, some in days, some only after months.

Although Google does not give one clear answer (and in a recent Publisher Center Help update a dedicated page on this issue seems even to have been deleted!) I’ll try to explain what I suspect Google News does, based on several sites and experiences, and what you can do to get it sorted.

First: this should not be related to your Google News sitemap. GN has said it does not retrieve image / thumbnail information from the sitemap. It uses its own algorithm to find the best suitable image from two possible sources: the RSS or Atom feed(s) you added in your Publisher Center, or the Post content/source code itself. Or both of these, depending on your settings in Publisher Center.

Second: Google News may even discard images that are clearly marked as “featured”, because it may be an incorrect size/orientation or show inappropriate content. I suppose this last reason for not using an image is very rare though, but the size/orientation reason is common. Minimum is said to be 60px by 60px so GN can make at least a thumbnail from it, but preferably larger and in landscape format to use it as full-width header image on different news outlets. Even though you cannot force GN to use full-width image layout, it’s best to provide such an image if possible. Specially if you are using AMP pages, then you’ll need images of at least 1200px wide!

What you can do to make sure Google News finds the correct image:

1. Make sure you give your news posts a featured image of a fairly large size.

2. Verify if featured images are marked as such in your page source code. Open a post in your browser, press Ctrl+u to view the page source. Press Ctrl+f and enter og:image in the search field. If you find an entry like <meta property="og:image" content="..." /> then verify if the URL in the content attribute is the correct image. (Note: I’m not sure if external CDN domains — like https://i2.wp.com/yoursite.com from Jetpack for example — are allowed by GN). But if there is no og:image present, then you can use any SEO plugin (or Jetpack with the Share module) to add one.

3. Verify if featured images are present in your RSS/Atom feeds. Specially if you have added feeds for sections in your Publisher Center. You can use a plugin like https://wordpress.org/plugins/featured-images-for-rss-feeds/ to add featured images with the correct markup so they will be recognized as thumbnail image.

4. Ask Google News to look further than just the feed. In your Publisher Center, under the Content tab, you will see your Sections listed. Each should have a feed set up as source. Click Edit and scroll down to Feed options. By default, the option “Generate articles directly from feed” will be selected. Change this to “Generate articles by crawling source URL” or “Generate articles directly from feed and crawl”.

Hope this helps 🙂

By the way, the next Google News Advanced plugin release will provide a dedicated RSS feed that includes featured images…

[RavanH]

Hi Eduardo, thanks for confirming!

Apparently, forcing the Status response to 200 is enough. I’ll work that into the next release so you won’t need to do this edit again after updating the plugin.

If you ever find out why this 404 response occurs or where it is coming from, we’d really like to know 🙂

[RavanH]

Hi Michael, what is the error message exactly? Usually, the news sitemap is rejected because the site is not yet accepted into Google News. Or at least, that fact is not yet know by the Search Console…

[RavanH]

Hi, can you share a link to your sitemap so I can verify it? You can use the support form if you wish to keep it off the public forum.

[RavanH]

Hi Giulia, can you share a link? I need to see it live to tell you more. Same as at the OP, you can use the contact page form if you do not wish to make it public…

[RavanH]

Hi Michael, welcome on these forums and sorry to hear you are having trouble with the short code. Can you share a link to your site so I can take a closer look?

You can post your site URL here or send it via the Contact page form with mention of this thread…

[RavanH]

Hi Stine, if I’m not mistaken we already had email contact about this but for anyone viewing this thread, searching for a similar answer:

Both in the widget and the coolclock shortcode it is possible to switch to a Custom skin. But even if you need only one element’s color changed, you’ll still need to define most other elements or the custom skin will not function well.

Visit https://premium.status301.net/coolclock-skins/ and copy the parameter code beside your favorite clock. Then read further on how to apply and adapt your own clock skin for both the widget and shortcode.

[RavanH]

Hi Celenie, sorry to hear you had trouble downloading. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

I’ve changed some settings and the download link should work now. Could you log in on http://premium.status301.net/account/ and try again? Please let me know if you still have trouble and I’ll send you the file directly.

Rolf

[RavanH]

Hi Scott,

This is currently not possible without modifying the plugin. I’ll take this as a feature request for the next release 🙂

[RavanH]

Hi Jonathan, the width and height parameters will not do anything but increasing the radius parameter should make your clock larger.

Parameters can be found on http://status301.net/wordpress-plugins/coolclock/ under FAQ “Can I insert a clock in posts or pages?” and on http://status301.net/coolclock-advanced/ where the advanced parameters are listed.

Hope that helps 🙂

[RavanH]

Hi again, I just received an e-mail about the same (or similar?) issue. In that case, it turns out the Social Sharebar plugin script throws an error on search result pages:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'top' of undefined

which blocks any script action after that, including the coolclock script.

Is your case the same?

No idea why Sharebar only throws this error on search result pages and not on normal pages. You’ll have to contact the Sharebar plugin developer about that…

If there is an option in the Sharebar plugin settings that allows you to disable the sharebar on search result pages, then please try that 🙂

[RavanH]

Hi Larry, there might be a script error occurring. Can you share a link to your site so I can see it live?

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