Who is Gunjan Jaswal?

Gunjan Jaswal is a Product Architect and Innovation AI Catalyst with 16+ years of experience building scalable platforms, AI-powered productivity tools, Chrome extensions, and enterprise WordPress plugins.

What does Gunjan Jaswal build?

Gunjan Jaswal builds WordPress plugins (published on WordPress.org), Chrome browser extensions, AI-powered tools, and interactive web experiences. His work spans SEO tooling, Core Web Vitals optimization, email marketing, and privacy-focused browser utilities.

What technologies does Gunjan Jaswal work with?

Gunjan Jaswal works with React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js, Three.js, PHP/WordPress, and AI/ML systems, with a focus on product architecture and full-stack engineering.

How can I contact Gunjan Jaswal?

You can reach Gunjan Jaswal through the contact form at gunjanjaswal.me or connect on GitHub and X (Twitter) as @gunjanjaswal.

What GitHub Actions has Gunjan Jaswal published?

Gunjan Jaswal has published two free GitHub Actions on the GitHub Marketplace: WP Plugin Version Guard, which fails CI when a WordPress plugin version is out of sync across the header, readme.txt, a version constant, and the changelog; and WP Plugin CI, a one-step quality gate that runs PHP lint, readme.txt validation, and optional Plugin Check.

Where can I find Gunjan Jaswal's open-source work?

Gunjan Jaswal's open-source work is published on WordPress.org (plugins), the Chrome Web Store (extensions), and the GitHub Marketplace (Actions), with source code on GitHub at github.com/gunjanjaswal.

Case Studies A lightweight Google News XML sitemap plugin

A lightweight Google News XML sitemap plugin

30 October 20262 min read

Case Study
WordPress
SEO

A lightweight Google News XML sitemap plugin

TL;DR Google News wants a specific sitemap format covering only recent articles, and most plugins that produce it drag in a heavy SEO suite. This plugin generates a compliant Google News XML sitemap and does only that, staying light on sites that just need the feed.

Google News runs on freshness, and it wants a particular kind of sitemap to find your latest articles: a news-specific format covering only recent posts. Producing it is not hard, but the common way to get it, installing a full SEO suite, is heavier than the feature deserves. This plugin does the one job and nothing else.

The problem

A Google News sitemap is not a normal sitemap. It uses a news schema with fields like the publication name and each article's publish date, and it deliberately includes only recent content, usually the last couple of days, because News cares about what is new, not your archive.

You can get one from a large all-in-one SEO plugin, but then you have installed an entire suite, with its settings, its overhead, and its surface area, to produce a single XML feed. For a site that just needs the news sitemap, that is a poor trade.

The approach

Do exactly one thing, correctly and lightly.

Generate a compliant Google News XML sitemap, with the required news fields.
Include only recent articles, matching what Google News expects, and leave the archive to the regular sitemap.
Stay lightweight. No sprawling suite, no settings maze, just the feed.

What shipped

The plugin generates a Google News compatible XML sitemap for WordPress and focuses on that alone. A news site or blog that wants to be found by Google News gets a valid feed without adopting a whole SEO platform to do it.

What I learned building it

The lesson was that "there is already a plugin for that" and "there is a right-sized tool for that" are different statements. Plenty of suites can produce a news sitemap as one feature among hundreds. But a site that needs only that feature is better served by a small tool that does it well than by a large one that does it incidentally. Focused plugins earn their place precisely because they refuse to become suites.

This is one of my WordPress plugins. The full set is in the products section of the site.

FAQ

How is a Google News sitemap different from a regular one?

It uses a news-specific format with extra fields like publication name and publish date, and it only includes recent articles, typically from the last couple of days, rather than the whole site. It signals fresh news content to Google News specifically.

Why build a dedicated plugin instead of using an SEO suite?

Many big SEO plugins can produce a news sitemap, but you have to install the entire suite to get it. If all you need is the news feed, that is a lot of weight and surface for one feature. A focused plugin does just the one job.

Does the news sitemap include old posts?

No. Google News is about fresh content, so the sitemap includes only recent articles, usually the last two days. Older posts belong in your regular sitemap, not the news one.