I put in an application to submit our blog to Google news, but it seems Google news will not include sites that are written and maintained by one individual!
I share with you the rejection email we got –
Thank you for your interest in Google News. We’ve received your suggestion and we’re unable to include it in Google News at this time. We don’t include sites that are written and maintained by one individual. We currently only include articles from sources that could be considered organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information.
If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Forum at: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news?hl=en. We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and will log your site for consideration should our requirements change.
Regards,
The Google News Team
Surely that will dissappoint many good blogs which are maintained by single authors, and they will miss out on a chance to get additional site traffic. But the reasons are understandable to keep the high content quality of Google news – because single authors might not be able to push original niche breaking news as fast and as exhaustively as multi-author blogs and organizations could, and of course what happens to the blog updates when the blogger is busy in real life or on vacation with no one to back up. But I suggest Google should clearly mention this on the submission page so that this multi-author requirements is clear to interested bloggers.
If you are a multi-author blog, submit your blog on the Google news submission page – it is clear they require a contact page and an about page detailing staff members. Also meet the technical requirements and remember to create a news sitemap.