News Publishers AEO: NewsArticle Schema, Journalist Authority, and Breaking News Citation Strategy
News publishers face a dual AEO challenge: optimizing for AI citation eligibility while managing the traffic impact of AI systems that summarize news content without requiring user clicks to source articles. The strategic response: build AEO authority through original journalism, journalist entity establishment, and NewsArticle schema - while simultaneously shifting business model focus toward direct audience channels (newsletters, apps) that are AI-insulated.
For related topics, see E-E-A-T for AEO and Schema Markup Basics.
News Publisher Schema Types
The three schema types that drive news publisher AEO - select each for implementation details and code examples:
NewsArticle Schema
The primary schema type for news content. Key properties: headline (same as <title>, ≤110 chars), datePublished and dateModified (ISO 8601), author (Person entity with name, url, sameAs), publisher (Organization with logo), image (required for Google News eligibility - 1200px minimum width), articleBody, and articleSection (category). NewsArticle schema is required for Google News Top Stories rich results and for strong AI citation eligibility in news queries.
"@type": "NewsArticle",
"headline": "Fed Raises Interest Rates by 0.25% in March 2026",
"datePublished": "2026-03-13T14:30:00Z",
"dateModified": "2026-03-13T16:45:00Z",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Jane Smith",
"url": "https://publisher.com/author/jane-smith"
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Financial Times",
"logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://ft.com/logo.png" }
}