Googlize your student newspaper

Want your student newspaper's stories read by people around the world? Make sure your Web site is included in Google News.

That was one piece of advice Josh Cohen, business product manager for Google News, had Thursday for students and advisers attending the Associated Collegiate Press National College Newspaper Convention in San Francisco this week.

"Make sure it's easy for us to crawl the page," he said.

You can check if your newspaper's Web site is already included in Google News by going to this page. If your site isn't included you can recommend it for inclusion here.

Google News aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide, including many college newspapers.

And if you don't already use Google News alerts for your reporting, start now. It's a great way to keep up to speed on what's going on.

You can, for example, register a Google alert for your college or university. Whenever your school (or whatever word or phrase you specify) is in the news, you'll get an email from Google. You can register for Google alerts to come weekly, daily or as it happens.

To keep up with news on college newspapers, for example, I have daily Google alerts on "college newspaper," "campus newspaper" and "student newspaper." They help me monitor what's going on in the world of college media.

You can create a Google alert here.