Why it matters
Article structured data is not required for Top Stories or other Google News features, but Google highly recommends it for all articles: it tells Google explicitly that the content is a news article, what its headline is, who wrote it and when, and it can indicate that content is behind a paywall.
How to meet it
Render a NewsArticle, BlogPosting or Article block on the server from the article's own fields: headline, image as the visible lead image in 1x1, 4x3 and 16x9 versions, datePublished and dateModified with a UTC offset (DEV-SDA-05), and author as a list of Person or Organization objects with name and a url to the author page. For paywalled articles add isAccessibleForFree false and a hasPart WebPageElement whose cssSelector names the paywalled section.
How to test it
The Rich Results Test detects the article on one URL per article template with no errors; the dates match the visible dates; every author url opens a real author page.
How Regensbot covers it
Decided from one URL.
An audit reads the response, the headers, the HTML, robots.txt, the sitemaps and the structured data, and the finding shows the evidence it saw.
Sources
Google documents02
- 01Article (Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting) structured dataGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
- 02Structured data for subscription and paywalled content (CreativeWork)Google Search Central (opens in a new tab)
Claims in the knowledge base05
- D3-C330ConsistentHow Search results are bornSaid on stage
- D3-C331ConsistentHow Search results are bornShown on screen
- D3-C332SourceHow Search results are bornGoogle's documentation
- D3-C334ConfirmedHow Search results are bornShown on screen
- D3-C333ConfirmedHow Search results are bornShown on screen
Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)
- Confirmed
- Google's documentation states the same thing.
- Consistent
- Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
- Source
- The claim is the cited document itself.