How to get into Google's Tops Stories?

[racenet1234]

Hi All,

I have been doing research for a few weeks and I cannot for the life of me figure out why I cannot get my website (Racenet) into the top stories in Google.

We are in Google News, have "news article" schema, have AMP pages. Our news articles also perform quite well organically and we typically dominate the Google News section.

We have two main competitors (Punters and Just Horse Racing) who are both in top stories and I cannot find anything that we are doing that they aren't.

Apparently the AMP "news article" schema is incorrect and that could be the reason why we aren't showing up in Google Top Stories, but I can't find anything wrong with the schema and it looks the same as our competitors. For example: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racenet.com.au%2Fnews%2Fblake-shinn-booked-to-ride-doncaster-handicap-favourite-alizee-20190331%3FisAmp%3D1

Does anyone have any ideas of why I cannot get my site into Google Top Stories? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[amayajace]

A Deeper Look at Google Top Stories. Top Stories – like the News box before them – generally appear as the result of search query about current news, and are composed of what Google deems the most relevant articles on the topic.

[ORLOVA]

First and foremost, you need to make sure that your stories are original. A major search engine like Google doesn’t want to syndicate the same piece of content verbatim and it’s search algorithm will pull you up. You’ve got to make your story original with accurate data points from credible sources. Wherever you got your information from, whether it’s trawling through search history, sitemap files, or exploring web pages – make sure your sources are trustworthy.