Support Google News Sitemaps

[TylerFisher]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I am using next.js to build local news websites. I want to ensure they are configured properly for SEO and Google News. Google News requires a specific sitemap format with special fields in order to have your news website populate in Google News.

Describe the solution you'd like In order to support this, next-sitemap would need to allow the population of nested fields. A Google News sitemap requires some specific nested fields. Here's an example from The New York Times:

<url>
  <loc>
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/learning/lesson-of-the-day-kehinde-wileys-times-square-monument-thats-no-robert-e-lee.html
  </loc>
  <lastmod>2021-03-05T20:38:12Z</lastmod>
  <news:news>
    <news:publication>
      <news:name>The New York Times</news:name>
      <news:language>en-US</news:language>
    </news:publication>
    <news:publication_date>2019-09-30T08:00:03Z</news:publication_date>
    <news:title>
      Lesson of the Day: ‘Kehinde Wiley’s Times Square Monument: That’s No Robert E. Lee’
    </news:title>
  </news:news>
  <image:image>
    <image:loc>
      https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/09/27/arts/27kehinde3/27kehinde3-articleLarge.jpg
    </image:loc>
  </image:image>
</url>

Ideally, when returning an object for a URL either in the transform function or in a dynamic sitemap, I could populate these fields:

return {
  loc: "/2019/09/30/learning/lesson-of-the-day-kehinde-wileys-times-square-monument-thats-no-robert-e-lee.html",
  lastmod: "2021-03-05T20:38:12Z",
  news: {
    publication: {
      name: "The New York Times",
      language: "en-US"
    },
    publication_date: "2019-09-30T08:00:03Z",
    title: "Lesson of the Day: 'Kehinde Wiley’s Times Square Monument: That’s No Robert E. Lee'"
  },
  image: {
    loc: "https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/09/27/arts/27kehinde3/27kehinde3-articleLarge.jpg"
  }
}

Describe alternatives you've considered I could generate this XML file on my own through next.js, but it would be nice to use the same library I'm using to generate the overall sitemap.

[sonnh58]

Hi, any updates ?

[b-barry]

hello @iamvishnusankar ,

For my project I need the Support of Google News Sitemaps. By looking at the code here, I saw that you are doing a test about "alternateRefs". I would like to update this part by adding new case for news such as the object below:

 news: {
    publication: {
      name: "The New York Times",
      language: "en-US"
    },
    publication_date: "2019-09-30T08:00:03Z",
    title: "Lesson of the Day: 'Kehinde Wiley’s Times Square Monument: That’s No Robert E. Lee'"
  },
  image: {
    loc: "https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/09/27/arts/27kehinde3/27kehinde3-articleLarge.jpg"
  }

If you agree with that I can do a PR to provide this functionality. What do you think ?

Thanks for the package!

[iamvishnusankar]

@b-barry Feel free to submit a PR anytime :)

[searleb]

For anyone also stuck needing nested field support, I've been able to work around it by passing a template literal into in the parent field eg:

{
    "image:image": `
            <image:loc>${imgUrl}</image:loc>
            <image:title>${imgTitle}</image:title>
            <image:caption>${imgCaption}</image:caption>
          `
}

[antonfrolovsky]

Hi, any updates?

[grangier]

Nested field support is also needed for video sitemaps. video:video....</video:video> so the solution https://github.com/iamvishnusankar/next-sitemap/pull/220 does't seem to work

[eugenehp]

return {
        loc: path, // => this will be exported as http(s)://<config.siteUrl>/<path>
        changefreq: config.changefreq,
        priority: config.priority,
        lastmod,
        alternateRefs: config.alternateRefs ?? [],
        "news:news": `
          <news:publication>
            <news:name>${name}</news:name>
            <news:language>en</news:language>
          </news:publication>
          <news:publication_date>${dateString}</news:publication_date>
          <news:title>${title}</news:title>
        `
      }

[fescobar]

Hi everybody Is this feature implemented? is there any pending PR? Thanks

[zuffik]

Hi, I was able to create a PR supporting every mentioned feature: google news, image and video sitemap. Please create a feedback as soon as possible (cc @iamvishnusankar )

[fescobar]

Great @zuffik I suppose is this one https://github.com/iamvishnusankar/next-sitemap/pull/437 Can you add in the doc how to use that? Do you need to call a method or automatically will identify images? Thanks

[zuffik]

@fescobar thanks for feedback, I updated the docs. You can use it by adding news, images or videos to the sitemap entry (see also ts reference):

https://github.com/iamvishnusankar/next-sitemap/blob/34c0096027cb92786a9c416aeccc2cd67e32f9ae/packages/next-sitemap/src/interface.ts#L282-L293

[Kyoss79]

Please consider merging this PR, this is needed very badly for the Google News Sitemaps.

[github-actions[bot]]

Closing this issue due to inactivity.

[zuffik]

R U kidding me?

[iamvishnusankar]

@zuffik Sorry, the inactivity was flagged by stale bot. I'm reviewing your PR now.