Want to push breaking news live directly to Google’s search results?  Google is now accepting publishers for their pilot of the Search Live Coverage Carousel feature, which allows publishers to push breaking news to the search results in real time.  Yes, you can push your breaking news content updates, whether content or video, directly to the search results with this pilot.

This feature allows publishers to publish “live sports, elections and breaking news as soon it’s available on your site.”

AMP is required, and it does require the structured data as well – similar to how publishers need the structured data for AMP content to surface in the “in the news” feature in the search results.  It is also required that publishers are also using an Atom XML feed to push the updates to Google.

At Google I/O earlier this year, Richard Gingras from Google announced real time indexing via API, and it seems this real time indexing as evolved into this, as they both share nearly the identical screenshot.  I noted at the time that it was using AMP technology for serving the content.

Because of the AMP requirement, it isn’t clear if these publishers can also push this type of content to the desktop search results, or if it is a mobile only option.

Google wants publishers that publish a “high volume of breaking and developing news coverage or live sports covering, including but not limited to live blogs, breaking news updates and live video.”  So you don’t need to worry about small publishers pushing their buy viagra, sports jerseys or Nikes to the top of the search results instantly.

For publishers interested in being considered for the pilot, you can submit your interest form here.