Big news for publishers in the Google News index. Inbal from Google announced in a Google News Help thread that in six months, Google will stop supporting the old News Sitemaps format and require you to switch over to the new format.
Inbal said:
The new format looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:n="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9"> <url> <loc>http://www.example.org/business/article55.html</loc> <n:news> <n:publication> <n:name>The Example Times</n:name> <n:language>en</n:language> </n:publication> <n:access>subscription</n:access> <n:genres>pressrelease, blog</n:genres> <n:publication_date>2008-12-23</n:publication_date> <n:title>Companies A, B in Merger Talks</n:title> <n:keywords>business, merger, acquisition, A, B</n:keywords> <n:stock_tickers>NASDAQ:A, NASDAQ:B</n:stock_tickers> </n:news> </url> </urlset>
For more details on this new sitemap format over here.
Again, you have six months to make this change, but the sooner you do it, the better. ALso, there is a learning benefit to the new sitemap file. Any questions, join the forum.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
Update: The Google News blog just added more information about this important update.