Google News RSS Feed: Free URLs, No Tools Required (2026)

Google News exposes free RSS feeds for every topic, region, keyword search, and trending section. The base URL is https://news.google.com/rss, and you customize what the feed returns by appending paths and parameters. No API key, no paid tool, no Google account.

Google doesn’t promote or document these feeds anywhere, but they’ve worked for years. This article covers the four feed types, the URL parameters that customize them, the search operators for building targeted queries, the post-2024 link encoding that confuses scrapers, and how to display Google News on your WordPress site using Aggregator. If you’re new to RSS, our beginner’s guide to RSS feeds covers the basics.

How Do I Get a Google News RSS Feed?

You construct the URL yourself. Pick the feed type, append the path, and add region and language parameters. There’s no signup or generator step.

1. Top stories: https://news.google.com/rss?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
2. Topic (e.g. Technology): https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/topic/TECHNOLOGY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
3. Location: https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/geo/New%20York?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
4. Keyword search: https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=YOUR+QUERY&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Swap the hl, gl, and ceid parameters to target a different region or language. Paste any of these URLs into an RSS reader, an automation tool, or the Aggregator source field. The detailed reference for each format is in the sections below.

What Is a Google News RSS Feed?

Google News aggregates articles from thousands of publishers worldwide. An RSS feed from Google News takes that same aggregated content and delivers it in a standardized XML format that any feed reader can parse.

Every Google News RSS feed follows a base URL pattern:

https://news.google.com/rss

From there, you append paths and parameters to narrow down what the feed returns. Top stories, specific topics, keyword searches, geographic regions, all accessible by tweaking the URL.

Here’s what a single item in a Google News RSS feed looks like:

Each item carries the story details your reader or WordPress site needs.

Title

The headline shown in Google News.

Link

A Google redirect that sends readers to the publisher.

Publication date

The date and time attached to the story.

Source

The publisher’s name and website.

Description

A short block that may include related coverage.

Each entry gives you the headline, a publication date, a description that often includes links to related coverage from other outlets, the original source name with its URL, and a small thumbnail image (150×150) served through Google’s image proxy. One thing to note: the <link> in each item goes through a Google redirect URL, not directly to the publisher’s site.

Google News RSS Feed URL Formats

Google News offers four main types of RSS feeds. Each one covers a different use case, and you can customize all of them with language and region parameters.

Top Stories

The simplest feed. This returns the current top headlines, the same stories you’d see on the Google News homepage:

https://news.google.com/rss?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

This feed typically returns around 25 items.

Topic Feeds

Google News organizes content into predefined topic categories. You can get an RSS feed for any of them:

https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/topic/TOPIC?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Replace TOPIC with one of these categories:

• WORLD
• NATION
• BUSINESS
• TECHNOLOGY
• ENTERTAINMENT
• SCIENCE
• SPORTS
• HEALTH

So the Technology feed looks like this:

https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/topic/TECHNOLOGY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Topic feeds return around 30 items each.

Google News also has sub-topics beyond these eight categories. You can find them by browsing Google News in your browser, clicking into a sub-topic, and grabbing the long hash ID from the URL. Those work as RSS feeds too, using the format https://news.google.com/rss/topics/HASH_ID?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en.

Location-Based Feeds

Want news from a specific city, state, or country? Use the geo feed:

https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/geo/LOCATION?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Replace LOCATION with a place name. Google is flexible here. City names, state names, and country names all work:

• .../geo/New%20York returns New York news (around 50 items)
• .../geo/California returns California-wide coverage
• .../geo/London returns London news

Use %20 for spaces in the URL, or just replace spaces with +.

Search Feeds

This is the most powerful one. You can turn any Google News search into an RSS feed:

https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=YOUR+QUERY&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Search feeds return up to 100 items, the largest of any feed type. A few examples:

• ?q=artificial+intelligence returns AI news
• ?q="WordPress+security" returns exact-match results
• ?q=SpaceX+OR+Boeing returns news about either company

We’ll dig into the advanced search operators in the next section.

Start with the feed that matches what you want to follow.

Top stories

The current headline mix, usually around 25 items.

Topic

One Google News category, such as Technology or Business.

Location

Coverage tied to a city, state, or country.

Search

Any query you choose, with as many as 100 results.

How to Build Custom Google News RSS Feeds

The search feed accepts the same operators you’d use in a regular Google search, plus a few extras specific to Google News. This is where you go from generic feeds to targeted ones.

Common Parameters

Every Google News RSS feed URL accepts these parameters:

• hl (language): Controls the language of results. Examples: en-US, fr-FR, de-DE, es-ES.
• gl (country): Sets the geographic perspective. Examples: US, GB, CA, AU.
• ceid (edition): Combines country and language, formatted as COUNTRY:lang. Examples: US:en, GB:en, FR:fr.

These three parameters work together. If you want French-language news from Canada:

https://news.google.com/rss?hl=fr-CA&gl=CA&ceid=CA:fr

Search Operators

Inside the q= parameter of a search feed, you can use these operators:

• Exact match: Wrap phrases in quotes. q="climate change"
• OR: Match either term. q=Tesla+OR+Rivian
• Exclude: Remove results with a term. q=Apple+-iPhone (Apple news, minus iPhone coverage)
• intitle: Term must appear in the headline. q=intitle:recession
• allintitle: All terms must appear in the headline. q=allintitle:earnings+report
• site: Results from a specific publisher only. q=site:reuters.com+inflation
• inurl: Term must appear in the article URL. q=inurl:review

You can combine these. A feed tracking electric vehicle news from Reuters and AP, excluding Tesla:

https://news.google.com/rss/search?q="electric+vehicle"+site:reuters.com+OR+site:apnews.com+-Tesla&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Time Filters

Narrow results to a specific time window using these operators inside the q= parameter:

• when: Relative time range.
  • when:1h for the last hour
  • when:7d for the last 7 days
  • when:3m for the last 3 months
• after: and before: for specific date ranges, using YYYY-MM-DD format.
  • after:2026-01-01+before:2026-03-01 returns results from January and February 2026

Combine a search with a time filter like this:

https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=WordPress+when:7d&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

That gives you all WordPress-related news from the past week.

Side note on Google Alerts: Google Alerts can also deliver results via RSS. When you create an alert at Google Alerts, choose “RSS feed” as the delivery method instead of email. The alert RSS feed covers all of Google’s index (not just Google News), so it picks up blog posts, forums, and other sources that Google News skips. Using both together gives you broader coverage.

Operator	What it does	Example
"..."	Exact phrase	q="climate change"
OR	Either term	q=Tesla+OR+Rivian
-	Exclude a term	q=Apple+-iPhone
intitle:	Term in the headline	q=intitle:recession
allintitle:	All terms in the headline	q=allintitle:earnings+report
site:	One publisher	q=site:reuters.com+inflation
inurl:	Term in the article URL	q=inurl:review
when:	Relative time range	q=WordPress+when:7d
after: / before:	Specific date range	q=AI+after:2026-01-01+before:2026-03-01

Why Google News RSS Links Look Encoded (and How to Decode Them)

To confirm an encoded Google News link actually resolves to a working feed, drop it into the feed checker below before you import it.

In late 2024, Google changed how article URLs appear in its RSS feeds. The clean publisher URL you used to see in the <link> tag is now wrapped in a Google-hosted redirect that looks like this:

https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMi[long+base64-encoded+string]?oc=5

Two ways to get back to the publisher URL, depending on how you're consuming the feed:

• Follow the redirect. Issue an HTTP request to the encoded URL and read the final Location header. Most RSS readers and scrapers do this automatically when a user clicks the link, so end readers rarely see the encoded URL.
• Decode the payload inline. The base64-encoded portion contains the original publisher URL. NewsCatcher's Missing Docs page and an n8n community workflow document both approaches with working code.

For Aggregator users, this is invisible. The plugin stores both the encoded link and resolves the destination at click time, so visitors land on the publisher's site without seeing the intermediate URL.

Limitations to Know About

Before building your feed setup, keep these in mind:

• 100-item cap on search feeds. No matter how broad your query, a single search feed returns a maximum of 100 articles. We confirmed this on 2026-05-19 with q=WordPress, which returned exactly 100 items. If you need more coverage, break your searches into narrower queries or use date ranges to paginate.
• The named topic and location paths now 302-redirect to opaque hash URLs. Tested 2026-05-19: /rss/headlines/section/topic/TECHNOLOGY issues an HTTP 302 redirect to /rss/topics/CAAqKggKIiRDQkFTRlFvSUwyMHZNRGRqTVhZU0JXVnVMVlZUR2dKVlV5Z0FQAQ, which then serves the items (we counted 62 from that endpoint). The geo path behaves the same way: /section/geo/New%20York redirects to a similar hash URL. RSS readers and Aggregator follow the redirect automatically, but if you're hard-coding feed URLs into a script that doesn't follow 302s, capture the final hash URL and store that one. The hash URLs stay stable for months but aren't human-readable.
• Links redirect through Google. The URLs in the feed don't point directly to publisher sites. They go through news.google.com/rss/articles/..., which redirects to the original article. This works fine for reading, but if you're displaying headlines on your site, keep in mind visitors will pass through Google's redirect.
• No official documentation. Google doesn't publish documentation for these RSS feeds. The URL formats are well-established and have worked reliably for years, but they're not part of any official API. Google could change them without notice.
• Copyright restrictions. The feed itself includes a copyright notice limiting use to "personal, non-commercial" reading. If you're displaying Google News content on a commercial site, make sure you understand the legal considerations. Our guide on content curation and duplicate content covers the broader topic.

One more thing worth clarifying. In early 2025, Google stopped accepting RSS feeds submitted by publishers through Google News Publisher Center. That was about publishers submitting their content to Google News, not about consumers accessing feeds from Google News. The consumer-facing RSS feeds covered in this article still work as expected.

What You Can Do With a Google News Feed

Once you've got your feed URLs, here's where things get practical:

• Build a news monitoring dashboard. Track industry coverage across multiple topics and regions from one place. Useful for PR teams, marketers, and anyone who needs to stay current without checking dozens of sites.
• Create a niche news section on your website. Pull in relevant headlines for your audience. A finance blog could display business news. A local community site could show city-specific coverage. A tech startup could curate AI and funding news. If you're thinking bigger, our guide on how to start a news aggregator site covers the full setup.
• Monitor competitor mentions. Set up search feeds with competitor brand names to track their media coverage in real time.
• Feed into automation tools. Pipe Google News feeds into Zapier, Make, or n8n to trigger workflows when specific topics appear in the news. Send a Slack alert when your company gets mentioned, for example.
• Research and content discovery. Use search feeds to find fresh sources, trending angles, and story ideas for your own content curation strategy.

There are plenty more ways to use RSS feeds once you start thinking of them as content pipelines rather than just reading lists.

The same feed can power a public page or stay behind the scenes.

Website news section

Give readers one place to scan the latest coverage.

Industry monitoring

Watch a market, company, or competitor without repeating searches.

Research dashboard

Bring several topics into one working view.

Automation trigger

Send new matches into another tool or workflow.

How to Display Google News Feeds on Your WordPress Site

This section walks through setting up a Google News feed display using Aggregator. If you've never added an RSS feed to WordPress before, our guide on adding RSS feeds to WordPress covers the basics. The core plugin is free; displaying the feed with templates requires a paid plan.

Step 1: Add the Google News Feed as a Source

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Aggregator > Sources and click Add a new source.
2. Give your source a descriptive name (something like "Google News - Technology" or "Google News - WordPress").
3. Paste your Google News RSS feed URL into the Source Link field. Use any of the URL formats from the previous sections.
4. Set the Limit the amount of stored items to value. The default is 15, but Google News search feeds can return up to 100 items, so increase this if you want more coverage.
5. Click Save, then click Import to pull in the feed items.
6. Check the Hub page to confirm the articles imported correctly.

Step 2: Create a Display

1. Go to Aggregator > Displays and click Create a new display.
2. Click the pencil icon to rename the display (something like "Industry News" or "Latest Headlines").
3. In the Settings section, click the Sources field and select the Google News source you created. You can also select a Folder if you've grouped multiple news sources together.
4. Choose your layout: List, Grid, or Excerpt & Thumbnail. For news headlines, the List layout works well. For a more visual presentation, go with Grid.
5. Click Save.

Step 3: Customize the Display

Click the Customization tab to adjust what shows up in each feed item. You can toggle visibility and order for:

• Title, Excerpt, Source Name, Publish Date, Author, Image, Link, Audio Player, and Pagination

For a Google News display, you'll probably want to show the Title, Source Name, Publish Date, and Excerpt. Google News feeds do include thumbnail images (150x150), so you can leave Image enabled. Just keep in mind they're small, so the List layout tends to look cleaner than Grid for this type of feed.

Step 4: Filter the Feed (Optional)

If your Google News feed covers broad topics and you want to narrow what appears on your site, you have two options.

Option A: Refine the RSS feed URL. Go back to the source and add search operators to the Google News URL itself. This is the most efficient approach because it filters at the source level.

Option B: Use Aggregator's Automations. In your source settings, click the Automations tab and add a new automation. You can filter by Title, Content, or both, using operators like "Contains" or "Does not contain." For example, you could import a broad Technology feed but only display items containing "WordPress" or "CMS" in the title.

Both the display-level Filtering tab and source-level Automations work here. Display filtering hides items from the front end. Automations prevent items from being imported in the first place. For high-volume feeds like Google News, Automations is the better choice since it keeps your database cleaner. Our guide on filtering RSS feeds goes deeper on both approaches.

Step 5: Embed on Your Site

Click Save on the display, then click Embed. You'll see four options:

• Create a Page or Create a Post to make a new page with the display already inserted.
• Block to add the display to an existing page using the WordPress block editor.
• Shortcode to embed it anywhere that accepts shortcodes.

Bonus: Import News as WordPress Posts

On any paid plan, you can import Google News articles as native WordPress posts using Aggregator's Feed to Post feature. Each article becomes its own post in your WordPress content library, published in your theme's layout with proper attribution to the original source.

This is useful for building a dedicated news aggregator site or adding a news section to an existing blog. You can assign imported articles to specific categories and post types, so they integrate cleanly with your existing content.

Google News items can be short on context, especially when a busy search feed brings in dozens at once. Aggregator can add an AI Summary or a bullet-point TL;DR as each item arrives, giving readers a useful preview before they click through.

Enable either option in the source's AI settings. Both use credits included with Pro and Elite plans; there is no API key or separate AI subscription to manage. For breaking news, import as drafts and give each summary a quick fact-check before publishing.

What the imported post keeps

Readers get enough context to decide what to open, while the original publisher stays visible.

Headline and dateOriginal source linkOptional Summary or TL;DR

Google News Feed URL Templates (Copy and Paste)

These are ready to use. Swap the language and region parameters if you're targeting a non-US audience.

Feed type	URL
Top stories	https://news.google.com/rss?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Technology	https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/topic/TECHNOLOGY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Business	https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/topic/BUSINESS?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Local: New York	https://news.google.com/rss/headlines/section/geo/New%20York?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Keyword search	https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=WordPress&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Competitor monitor	https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=Shopify+-stock+-shares&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Last 24 hours	https://news.google.com/rss/search?q="content+marketing"+when:1d&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Paste any of these directly into an RSS reader or into Aggregator's Source Link field.

Tips for Managing Google News Feeds

• Use Folders to organize multiple feeds. If you're pulling in feeds for different topics or regions, Aggregator's Folders feature lets you group sources by category. Then you can create displays that pull from entire folders instead of individual sources.
• Match fetch intervals to how fresh you need the content. Google News updates constantly, but that doesn't mean you need to fetch every hour. For most sites, checking every 4-6 hours is plenty. Save server resources for when freshness actually matters.
• Layer Google News feeds with direct source feeds. Google News is great as a catch-all, but for your most important sources, subscribe to their RSS feeds directly too. This way you get faster updates from priority publishers and broader coverage from Google News as a safety net.
• Be specific with search feeds. A broad query like q=technology returns a lot of noise. Narrow it down with exact phrases, exclusions, and source restrictions. Two or three targeted feeds beat one unfocused one.
• Watch for redirect behavior. Remember that Google News feed links pass through a redirect. If you're displaying these on your site and tracking clicks, the initial URL will be a news.google.com domain before redirecting to the publisher.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Google News still have RSS feeds?

Yes. As of July 2026, all the feed formats described in this article work. Google hasn't officially promoted these feeds, but they've maintained them for years. The base URL is https://news.google.com/rss and you can extend it with topic, location, and search parameters.

How many articles does a Google News RSS feed return?

It depends on the feed type. Top stories feeds return around 25 items. Topic feeds return around 30. Location feeds can return up to 50. Search feeds return the most, capping out at 100 items per query.

Can I get a Google News RSS feed for a specific country or language?

Yes. Add the hl (language), gl (country), and ceid (edition) parameters to any feed URL. For example, ?hl=de-DE&gl=DE&ceid=DE:de gets you German-language news from Germany. Most major country/language combinations are supported.

Do Google News RSS feeds work with Aggregator?

Yes. Paste any Google News RSS feed URL into the Source Link field when creating a source in Aggregator. The plugin handles the feed like any other RSS source. You can display the items using templates, import them as WordPress posts, or filter them with Automations.

Is using Google News RSS feeds free?

Accessing the feeds is free. No API key or Google account required. Reading them in an RSS reader costs nothing. Displaying the feed on a WordPress site with display templates requires a paid Aggregator plan.

What happened to Google News RSS feeds in Publisher Center?

In early 2025, Google removed the option for publishers to submit RSS feeds through Google News Publisher Center. That change affected publishers sending content to Google News. The consumer-facing RSS feeds for reading news from Google News were not affected and continue to work normally.

Wrapping Up

A Google News RSS feed is just a URL that returns a stream of articles in a format any RSS tool can work with. Pick your topics, set up your search queries, choose your region, and you've got a news feed tailored to what you actually care about.

For reading in an RSS app, you're all set. If you want to display that news on your WordPress site, whether it's an industry news section, a content aggregator, or a research dashboard, Aggregator handles the import and display side of things.

For RSS feeds from other platforms, check out our guides on YouTube RSS feeds, Substack RSS feeds, and podcast RSS feeds.

Bring the feed into WordPress

Build a Google News section that stays current

Add the feed once, choose what belongs on your site, and let Aggregator handle the updates.

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