Google Discover

Google Discover is an auto-generated content feed that appears in the Chrome and Google apps for iOS and Android. Unlike the search function where users actively search for information, Discover provides a browsing experience through a highly personalized feed — similar to social media apps.

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Discover features content based on the user’s search history, interests and engagement with Google’s assets. And the feed is automatically refreshed with new content.

As long as your content is indexed and complies with Discover’s content policies, it’s eligible to appear on Discover. You don’t have to apply any specific structured data or submissions t particluar platforms.

However, being eligible doesn’t guarantee that your content will be featured.

4.8.2 Does Google Discover Matter for SEO?

Any website, not just news sites, can receive a significant amount of traffic from mobile devices if it appears on Google Discover.

For instance, Ahrefs’ SEO blog receives a significant number of visitors from Google Discover.

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Discover doesn’t just promote content based on user behavior, but also allows users to follow specific sites. This way, publishers can attract more loyal and returning visitors to their site.

Google’s Goals

Discover perfectly aligns with Google’s endeavor to bring these three fundamental shifts to its search experience:

• Transitioning from answers to journeys

• Providing a queryless way to find information

• Shifting from text to a more visual approach to finding information

By considering Discover in your SEO strategy, you’re also staying abreast of Google’s ambitions for search.

4.8.3 Challenges Publishers Face With Google Discover

Google Discover may be an excellent source of additional traffic, but you need to pay attention to the word “additional” here. Unlike SEO, you can’t build a pure Discover-based strategy for driving traffic.

The clicks coming from Discover are highly unpredictable. Many publishers have reported having a sudden collapse in Discover traffic. Even Google has confirmed the “serendipitous nature” of Discover and has asked publishers to treat it as an extra traffic source.

Discover traffic is vulnerable to:

• Google’s core algorithm updates

• Other frequent updates

• Discover content guidelines

4.8.4 Optimizing Content for Google Discover

First off, optimizing for Discover should play second fiddle to more traditional SEO strategies already covered in this course. Once you’re happy with your levels of organic traffic then start to consider optimizing for Discover.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time and resources to drive traffic from Discover, as your content is already automatically eligible to appear on the feed provided your pages are indexed and follow Discover’s content guidelines.

That said, here are a few content optimization tips that can increase your chances of Discover surfacing your content.

Leverage High-quality Visuals

Another way to have your content featured in Discover’s feed is by leveraging high-quality visuals. That’s because graphics, images and videos get the most attention from users on Discover.

Google suggests including large high-quality images in your content to earn more clicks from Discover. Google also published a case study on large images for Discover that features a food blog that saw a 79% rise in its click through rate (CTR) after implementing this tactic.

Make sure images are at least 1,200 pixels wide and you’ve enabled the  max-image-preview:large meta robots tag, or by using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

Also note that it’s not just helpful for visibility on Discover, it’s a general best practice from an image SEO standpoint.

Additionally, consider adding engaging videos to your content since the video is one of the most preferred content formats that people consume. It can increase the discoverability of your content on Google Discover.

We’ve created a module that deep dives into the SEO power of video content as well as a detailed guide to image optimization.

Avoid Clickbait

Google firmly advises avoiding tactics that inflate engagement artificially. For example: providing misleading or exaggerated information in preview content — title tags, meta descriptions, snippets, images, etc.

This can also result in manual action for your website.

At the same time, Discover intends to feature content that is valuable, relevant and interesting to its users. As such, if your content is irrelevant and misleading, it’ll be filtered out by the algorithm.

So, instead of creating clickbait, keep your content and metadata aligned. Make sure your titles and meta descriptions reflect the actual content in a way that attracts visitors.

Cover Popular Topics 

Since people naturally have more interest in news and developments in their areas of interest, Discover encourages content that is timely for current trends. So if you publish such news-worthy content on-time, its more likely to appear on Discover feed and drive traffic.

That’s one reason you’ll regularly find news sites’ content on Discover feed. However, Discover also shows:

• Content that narrates a story well

• Content that provides unique insights

• Evergreen content that adds value for the audience

For example, if a user intends to start yoga and does some research on Google, then their Discover feed may start displaying articles, videos and stories on yoga. Discover won’t solely feature recent content on the topic, suggesting popular articles and videos that could’ve been published months prior.

Discover offers publishers a great way not only to drive traffic to fresh content but also evergreen content that is months or years old.

Besides, you can also use tools like GDdash and Discover Insights to analyze your Google Discover data and check the content that’s performing well. Based on this analysis, you can reverse engineer your upcoming content pieces to optmize for Discover.

Also, look for the content that attracted good traffic in the past but isn’t performing anymore. Then, identify the content pieces that are still relevant to current times and refresh them. This tactic has worked well many publisher sites we’ve been monitoring.

Follow Google’s Content Policies

In addition to following Discover’s content policies, you must also adhere to Google’s general content policies and Google Search Essentials.

This means you need to follow all the organic and white-hat SEO tactics if you want your content to show up on Discover.

Although it may sound like a lot of work, it isn’t. That’s because you should be following the above guidelines as part of your general SEO strategy regardless of Discover. The only extra checks are compliance with Discover’s policies.

Track Discover Traffic in GSC

You can monitor your website performance on Discover in Google Search Console’s (GSC) Performance reports. If your site is drawing traffic from Discover, GSC will automatically show the Discover tab in the Performance section on the side panel.

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It shows you the total number of clicks, impressions and average CTRs for your content that’s featured on Discover over the last 16 months.

You can also diagnose drops in your Discover traffic which could be attributed to algorithm changes, Google core updates or any manual actions issued by a Google reviewer. You can also get a comprehensive view of any manual actions assigned to your website using GSC.

Valentin Pletzer addressed the issue of trying to track visits from Google Discover a few years ago, and mapped out his findings in the table below:

At the moment, this is the only way to track the Discover traffic for your site. Google Analytics doesn’t show a dedicated traffic source for Discover yet. This means it can be challenging to analyze and make sense of Discover traffic data at scale.

Some publishers have reported seeing sudden drop-offs in Discover traffic. This can be due to several things, including Google core updates, algorithm changes or manual actions. Manual actions are issued to a site by Google when a human reviewer deems it does not meet Google’s webmaster quality guidelines.

There are a range of reasons a site can be issued a manual action, from misleading conduct to user-generated spam to keyword stuffing. Google Search Console (GSC) provides an easy way to see whether a site has received any manual actions via the manual actions report.

Publishers who have received a manual action can, and should, amend the problem immediately by following Google’s advice.

4.8.5 Nice to Have

This section covers the add-ons to the key content optimization tactics that we’ve discussed in the previous section. They can provide an additional boost to your content’s chances of showing up on Discover.

Optimizing for Disover’s Follow Feature

The Follow feature on Discover allows users to follow the sites of their interests. This way, users can keep receiving updates from websites in the Following tab on Discover’s interface.

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As of now, the Follow button feature is only available on Chrome for Android and to signed-in English-language users in the US, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, Canada and Australia.

The Follow feature uses RSS or Atom feeds installed on your site, which gives you control over your site’s Follow experience. If your site doesn’t have either of these feeds, Google will generate a feed automatically for your domain based on how it views your site.

As such, we’d recommend enabling the RSS or Atom feed on your site and adding it in the <head> section of your pages to guide Google as to which feed you want the users to follow for a specific page and the category page.

Updating Content Periodically

Not every content piece that you produce will perform well — either on Google Search or Discover. Sometimes content that performed well on organic search may not attract traffic from Discover, and vice versa.

Regardless of the platform, you should update your content at regular intervals to:

• Improve low-performing pages

• Boost keyword rankings

• Increase organic traffic.

You may also see a content piece that didn’t have any Discover traffic, suddenly start driving clicks after a refresh. It’s a common phenomenon with organic search traffic.

Try Web Stories

Google Web Stories is similar to the popular “Stories” content format that you see on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. It’s a visually-rich and interactive content format that allows users to swipe through your stories on mobile devices.

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As you can see in the above GIF, Stories has a dedicated carousel space on Discover feed. Thus, it’s an excellent opportunity to appear on and get clicks from Discover by building web stories for your content.

Moreover, web stories also appear on standard Google Search and Google Images which can result in more traffic to your site.

Visit our module on Web Stories to learn more.

4.8.6 Avoid These Common Pitfalls

Now, let’s take a look at the common pitfalls you should avoid to get the best out of Discover for your website.

Breach of Discover Content Policies 

The easiest way to have your content barred from the Discover feed is by not following the Discover policies.

Discover content policy explicitly mentions the types of content that they’ll prohibit and punish and includes:

• Dangerous content

• Deceptive practices

• Harassing content

• Hateful content

• Manipulated media

• Medical content

• Sexually explicit content

• Terrorist content

• Violence and gore

• Vulgar language and profanity.

Discover also has some feature-specific guidelines for ads, elections and misleading content. Ensure your site is compliant with these policies to steer clear of manual actions from Google.

Only Optimizing English-Language Content

Discover works with all the languages that Google Search supports. Only the Follow feature is not working in languages other than English at present.

This means that publishers in other languages stand to benefit from additional Discover traffic as long as they implement the best practices outlined in this module.

4.8.7 Examples of Google Discover

Case Study 1: A regional european publisher covering timely announcements

Due to confidentiality reasons we are unable to disclose this publisher, however, it is worth noting the importance of aligning timely content that aligns with an audiences need.

Being a local publisher from a south-west European country, it is a go-to source for all the current events and the functioning of its principality.

As shown in the chart below, Google Discover traffic is fairly erratic, however, there are key patterns in which they’ve recently experienced spikes.

For instance on Tuesdays and Wednesdays key transport announcements provided by the principality for locals and abroad visitors has been well received. During the weekends royal news announcements and event recaps have contributed to more discover traffic.

The importance of reverse engineering the kind of topics and days news pieces are published, feed into users personalized content preferences and history which could lead to more consistent Google Discover traffic.

4.8.8 Actions and Takeaways

Now that you understand the what, why and how of Google Discover, it’s time to leverage it and drive additional traffic to your website.

All you have to do is create quality content that your audience would benefit from and optimize it for Discover using the tactics mentioned in this guide. Also, ensure you’re following Discover’s content policies along with your regular SEO best practices to establish your site’s visibility on Discover.