<b>News sitemaps have a 48-hour window</b>

<b>News sitemaps have a 48-hour window</b>

Google News sitemaps are not regular sitemaps. URLs older than 2 days must be removed — keep them and you get warnings.

Rules:
— ✅ Include only articles published in the last 48 hours.
— ✅ Max 1,000 URLs per news sitemap; split if exceeded.
— ✅ Required: <code>&lt;news:publication_date&gt;</code> in W3C format with timezone.
— ✅ <code>&lt;news:title&gt;</code> matches the on-page headline.

SOP:
Step 1 — Regenerate frequently — as often as you publish, at minimum every few hours.
Step 2 — Drop URLs the instant they pass the 48-hour mark.
Step 3 — Keep a separate regular sitemap for the permanent archive.

Threshold: zero URLs older than 48 hours in the news sitemap.

Definition of done: the news sitemap is a rolling 48-hour, ≤1,000-URL window, regenerated on publish.