If your publication is included in Google News and you tried to submit a Sitemap file on Friday, you may have noticed it was rejected. Several publishers have been complaining about this in a few Google News Help threads.
The issue is that some publications are finding out they are no longer included in Google News. They are instructed to submit a Sitemap file, but when they do, they are told the Sitemap file is no good. The thing is, they never really changed their Sitemap file so they don't know what the issue is.
Inbal from the Google News team explained:
We've recently noticed that all news sitemaps which were submitted since Friday were rejected in Webmaster Tools. Our engineers were able to fix this bug and we've just resumed crawling the news sitemaps again. We apologize for the inconvenience in resubmitting your news sitemaps and appreciate your support while we work to improve Google News.
There is no estimated time for a fix, but you should be aware this is a larger issue that Google is addressing.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
