My feeds are being generated with wrong timezone

Hi, We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience caused you. Can you please kindly let us know, The Issue persists after the specific update or did you change anything recently? So that we will analyze the issue and assist you accordingly in fixing the issue ASAP!

Hello guys! Thank you for your response.

In fact, since I opened this thread, I have just changed my PHP default timezone in my php ini settings (image), but this had no effect, since my google news publication is still showing the publish time 4 hours ago.

You told about an update… what type of update do you refer to? GN Publisher update?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by lucasnascimento.

Hi, Thank you for the response. The given screenshot link is not working. Can you please cross-check once and share with us the link in another format? : https://imgur.com/a/2ir2ahW

You told me about an update… what type of update do you refer to? GN Publisher update? – Yes

Hello guys! I’m sorry for the broken link.

Here’s another link for the screenshot: https://freeimage.host/i/Hsfd6Pa

For the GN Publisher update, I double checked, and the version intalled in my website is 1.5.8, which I believe is the latest version. Also, have no update notification for it in my website admin panel.

Hi, Thank you for the info. Can you please check once by clearing the app’s data and cache and let us know back the response result? So that we will assist you accordingly if the issue persists the same.

Thanks for your assistance, guys!

I ended up deleting the whole Google News account, so I can start configuring everything from scratch again.

I must be doing it between today and tomorrow. Afterwards, I gonna see how the configuration is going to carry on, and let you guys know as soon as I have some news!

Hi, Thank you for the response. Sure, kindly do let us know back the response once you have done with it. So that we will assist you accordingly if the issue persists the same.

Hello guys! I deleted gn publisher, deleted my google news publications, and did everything from scratch again. Unfortunately, I still have the same problem. My publication is still being reviewed, but in my publisher center preview page, I can see that all the feed times and news times are correct, but not the “live” google news publication page. It’s still adding some hours offset to my posts, as you can see below:

https://freeimage.host/i/HL3ovrx – Preview
https://freeimage.host/i/HL3ok1j – Live

Here is my publication link, if you guys want to check: https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMNv8kgswmoLcAg

And my website is https://radiomanchete.rio in case you want to check some of the news publish times.

Thank you again for your assistance!

Hi, Thank you for the response. please kindly go through the following link: https://www.ads-software.com/documentation/article/wordpress-feeds/#rss-feed-time-and-date-format

Hello guys! Thank you for the response.

I’ve read the article, and understood that the normal behavior of the feed is to use the RFC822 date and time format, not our blog’s one. I got this.

But in this case, why does google news still shows all the publish times 4 hour ahead? Based in what, if the publish times are correct both in the website/server and in the feeds as well?

As an example, I have another website, https://fup.org.br, that is configured in Google News as well (https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMPW8rwswgsjHAw), uses the same plugins, both SEO and GN Publisher, and the same server configurations and timezones. All the configurations are exactly the same, and I don’t have this problem in it.

Any clue?

Hi Lucas,

I would suggest looking at on-page factors that might be affecting the time that Google News is displaying.

If you have the ability to set your time zone in your schema data (the “datePublished” value), that might help.

And in the date under the byline, I would remove the ‘h’ that is just after the time (example: 7:41h) or remove the time there all together and just have the date. I’m thinking the ‘h’ might be throwing Google off.

It could be something else causing this, you may have to experiment some to figure out what is causing it, but I would start with those two things,

Chris
Publisher Center Product Expert
Original author of GN Publisher

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by christopheran.

Hi Cristopher! Hope you’re well.

I did what you told me, and removed the “h”… by the moment it didn’t cause any effect in my google news publication, but even being very sceptical I’ll wait some days more.

Meanwhile, I confess I don’t know what can I do more =/

You would be able to tell if it worked as the next time you published an article, that article would have the time correct.

Also, I think including the gmt offset for your time zone in the datePublished value in your schema may help. You might need to check with the developer of your schema plugin (or theme, if your theme includes schema) on how to do that.

Like I said above, you may have to try several things to figure out where Google is picking up that incorrect time,

Chris

Hey Cristopher!

I saw your previous message and applied the changes early in the morning, and my team already posted a couple posts along the day that unfortunately stay wrong. As an example, one of the latest posts crawled by google news:

Post with its publish time: https://freeimage.host/i/HLgzwCX
Post in the website with correct time: https://freeimage.host/i/HLgIjAQ
My schema test with correct time: https://freeimage.host/i/HLgISKg
My post on my news sitemap: https://freeimage.host/i/HLgurjp
My post in Google News with wrong time: https://freeimage.host/i/HLgTo5x

I know that I might be a bit repetitive, but I’m sending all the flow again just in case I’m letting something pass before my eyes…

Thank you!

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by lucasnascimento.

The meta tag is not schema, those two things are different, however, it may help to include the timezone offset there as well.

Here’s what I’m looking at:

https://radiomanchete.rio/golpes-do-desenrola-no-whatsapp-e-redes-sociais-roubam-dados-e-pedem-pagamentos/#:~:text=%22datePublished%22%3A%222023%2D07%2D19T20%3A45%3A18%22

What I’m suggest that you try is to include the time zone offset in that datePublished value. If you go to:

view-source:https://radiomanchete.rio/golpes-do-desenrola-no-whatsapp-e-redes-sociais-roubam-dados-e-pedem-pagamentos/

and search for: datePublished

you will see it is currently:

“datePublished”:”2023-07-19T20:45:18″

I would suggest including the time zone offset like this:

“datePublished”:”2023-07-19T20:45:18-03:00″

Without digging into your WP install, I don’t know how you would do that. I would think it might be a setting in your schema setting. I’m not sure though, when I set up a site on WP it seems to include the time zone offset by default, but maybe that’s just due to something I set up automatically without thinking about it.

Here’s Google on using time zone offset – https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for#:~:text=Use%20the%20right%20time%20zone

What I’m thinking is that because there isn’t a time zone offset, Google is thinking you are using GMT time. I realize your other site is set up the same way and it’s not an issue there, but Google is goofy like that sometimes.

What I can’t figure out, with that theory, is why the displayed time is 4 hours off, not 3. In Brazil you are -3 from GMT, correct?

Anyway, I’m not positive that this will fix the problem, like I said before, you’ll have to experiment some to figure out where Google News is picking up the correct date. I’m just saying that if you were paying me to troubleshoot this, that’s where I would start,

Chris