Top Stories is a fresh-news carousel drawn from Google News. Only publishers that meet Google News content policies are eligible, and stories usually need to be published within the last 48 hours to appear.
Eligibility
A site does not need to be in a curated Google News list — Google discovers eligible publishers automatically — but authorship, transparency, and adherence to Google News content policies are effectively required.
Example
A search during a major sports event returns a Top Stories carousel of the latest match reports before any evergreen content is shown.
How SEM Optimiser reports it
Top Stories is captured as a SERP feature. Publishers can filter their keyword sets to only queries where Top Stories appears, which highlights the news beats to prioritise.
Related terms
- SERP Feature
A SERP feature is any non-standard element on a search results page beyond the classic ten blue links, such as a featured snippet, People Also Ask box, or local pack.
- E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, the framework Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines use to assess the credibility of content.
- Schema Markup
Schema markup is structured data written in the schema.org vocabulary that helps search engines understand a page and qualifies it for rich results.