Google Discover

Philip J. Fry

Philip J. Fry

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Google Discover is Google's recommendation engine. Based upon past behavior, Google figures out a user's interests and suggests more content similar to that. It apparently takes into consideration a user's expertise in that interest. Users can also choose what topics to receive more recommendations of.

Use cases listed on the Google site for this includes: people planning trips, where they are suggested other pages; people reading about a hobby of theirs; and some other stuff.

In my opinion, having content that appears on Google Discover would be a good top of the funnel way of obtaining traffic, brand exposure, and some customers. One thing I've learned is that by having a 1,200 px wide image, you increase your odds of appearing on Google Discover. The image should be something that is appealing to people who are interested in that topic.

What other things have you considered or tried for Google Discover? If this is totally new for you, you're welcome :smile:
 
I noticed one of my articles made it to Google Discover, don't know why. It did send a lot of traffic. Didn't convert very well though.
 
My experience:
Generally happens with WP sites (although one site with blog in subdirectory has also had 'normal' pages in Discover).
Images not as big as mentioned as mentioned by @Philip J. Fry but with OG markup.
GSC reckons 5-6% CTR wrt impressions/clicks on the top graph but the stats underneath are incomplete/useless.
No real pattern to content (although all in same massive general niche).
 
ToffeeLa said:
My experience:
Images not as big as mentioned as mentioned by @Philip J. Fry but with OG markup.
Click to expand...
From https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/mobile/google-discover:

"To increase the likelihood of your content appearing in Discover, we recommend the following:
  • Include compelling, high-quality images in your content, especially large images that are more likely to generate visits from Discover. Large images need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview:neutral:arge setting, or by using AMP. Avoid using a site logo as your image."
... I'm going to include large images that are at least 1200 px wide. It says it right there.
 
Philip J. Fry said:
... I'm going to include large images that are at least 1200 px wide. It says it right there.
Click to expand...
Not disputing what you are saying, just giving my own experience. Mine are 840px. Possibly I could have more Discover results if I made them larger but there is a limit to jumping through hoops.

I had a bit of a scout around GSC (which seems to be very badly coded in relation to Discover) and, if you switch from a site with Discover featured in the side panel (not all sites will have it) while in the Discover results to another site, you can sometimes discover Discover results which are not normally shown.
 
For the last 3 days, I've been having a spike of Direct traffic.
Where does this come from?

Google Discover:
DzCntjE.png

The CTRs are insane. And bear in mind: 10.6% is the CTR for all countries. For France, it's 19.5%.

Without doing any research, I thought Discover was an app. It's not.
It's simply the feed displayed on the Google mobile app.

From my own data, I will agree with @ToffeeLa:
ToffeeLa said:
No real pattern to content (although all in same massive general niche).
Click to expand...

I've already had some traffic coming in from Discover some time ago; about 600 visits over 10 days.

I'm having an idea: create a FB ad redirecting to the posts Discover promoted, targeting people using an Android smartphone—Android Webview traffic (in Analytics, Audience > Technology > Browser/OS) being up 275% the last 3 days compared to the 3 days before.
wBUN05Z.png


Anyone here making a decent chunk of traffic from Discover (on a regular basis)?

Resource: Performance report (Discover) (support.google.com)
 
Google PE said:
Sorry, NDA.
Click to expand...

So you posted someone else's screenshot, from behind an NDA, and you don't want to elaborate on it whatsoever?

I doubt MrMedia wants to know the URL or a detailed roadmap of every single thing you did.

Does your NDA prevent you from speaking about Google Discover at all? I imagine he's just curious about some general info about what you did.

If you can't talk about that with your NDA, you might want to reconsider your username and signature...?
 
MrMedia said:
Valuable contribution.
Click to expand...
I cannot discuss this particular site, but we can discuss this topic in general.

In the Discover field, the main thing is content. In many cases, this is not news, but entertainment content.

If a lot of such content is published every day, the site will have a lot of traffic from Google Discover.
Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/mobile/google-discover
Click to expand...

Images and videos are critical important content for Google Discover.
Include compelling, high-quality images in your content, especially large images that are more likely to generate visits from Discover. Large images need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview:neutral:arge setting.
Click to expand...
Provide high quality images. Don't use images that are too small or have a low resolution.
 
On the 1200px wide image requirement, I have the max-image-preview meta tag and og:neutral:mage tags, but the actual code for rendering my featured image is something like this:

Code: 
<img width="788" height="462" src="xxxxxx-788x462.jpg" srcset="xxxxxx-788x462.jpg 788w, xxxx-800x450.jpg 800w, xxxxx-1600x900.jpg 1600w, xxxxxx.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px">

It comes from my WP theme. Is that sufficient or are we expected to "img src" the 1200px wide image no matter the width of the screen the content is being shown on?
Google PE said:
Images and videos are critical important content for Google Discover.
Click to expand...
Do embedded YT shorts and TikTok videos count (from the site's own account)?
 
Darth said:
Do embedded YT shorts and TikTok videos count (from the site's own account)?
Click to expand...
A bit off-topic.

Do we think Google treats Instagram embeds similar to images?

I have been mixing them into my content to make articles a bit more visually appealing.
 
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