Familiar with Google’s Top Stories feature?
If not, you’re about to be.
In this guide, I cover everything from Top Stories origins to why they’re so important to how you can improve your odds of ranking for them.
Before They Were Google Top Stories, They Were In The News
First step? Going back to the Google news box beginnings.
In its earliest incarnation, Google results would occasionally feature a “News For” box.
This would appear when a major event or person was searched for, right at the top of the SERP. Generally, it showed a small thumbnail image, headline and short excerpt, as well as related headlines from other sources listed below.
The stories featured in this box were pulled directly from Google News, which only includes sites that have been submitted, reviewed and approved directly by Google.
Then in October 2014, Google tweaked the results slightly and labeled the new box “In the News.”
The information here looked similar …