Google News no longer supports the standout meta tag and Editors’ Pick

With the launch of the new AI-powered Google News last night, Google has pulled support for two webmaster and SEO features for Google News publishers: the standout meta tag and the Editors’ Pick section.

Google posted about this change last night on Twitter, saying:

As part of the new Google News, we have ended support for Editors’ Picks feeds & the standout meta tag. We’ll have more to share on other ways publishers can optimize visibility in the near future.

As part of the new Google News, we have ended support for Editors' Picks feeds & the standout meta tag. We'll have more to share on other ways publishers can optimize visibility in the near future. You can learn more about the new Google News here: https://t.co/64VB1PRmxi

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 15, 2018

For those publishers that use these features, there is obviously no reason to continue to do so. It is also built into the Yoast SEO plugin, and I assume Yoast will be removing those features as well. Here is a screen shot from the Yoast SEO plugin:

The standout meta tag launched in September 2011 as a way to enable news publishers to highlight articles they think stand above and beyond the rest. Their use was limited to seven times in a seven-day period, so publishers learned to use them sparingly.

The Editors’ Pick also launched in 2011, but in August. It let publishers who were included in this hand-curated system define which stories should be included in that list.

This comes just a few months after Google also dropped support for the meta keywords new tag.

Both of these features are no longer supported in the new version of Google News.