What is Google Discover? And What Publishers Need To Know
Google Discover is a growing channel for news and media publishers to acquire traffic from. Compared to the traditional way of searching for content, Google Discover flips the switch and instead recommends content that you are most likely to read. Wondering how you can optimize for Google Discover? We’ll cover that and more.
What is Google Discover?
Google Discover is an AI-driven content recommendation tool that works by suggesting content for users to consume. Discover relies on a user’s search history, past web activity, and interests to recommend videos and articles they would love to consume.
Google Discover feed includes
- News and evergreen content
- Images, videos & Web Stories
- it appears in Google mobile homepage and the Google Search homepage on desktop
- It appears it’s also available in multiple languages.
- Highly personalized
- Users can follow topics, places, businesses, entities and so on.
The feed is generated dynamically and differs from one user to another.
How Does Google Discover Work?
Google Discover is different from search as you already know. In Google search, You have a keyword and this keyword will determine what results you will get. Where as in Google Discover there is no query, it’s queryless and it matches users interests..
Reader Interest Profiling
Google tracks reader behavior across its services such as search history, YouTube activity, location, app usage, etc. Based on that data it understands which topics the reader is interested in (e.g., AI, cricket, politics, health). This helps Discover suggest only relevant topics to the reader
Knowledge Graph
Reader interests are matches against entities (people, places, things) using the Knowledge Graph, helping Discover serve content that is topically relevant to reader interests even if the specific keywords don’t match.
Content Shortlisting
Usually most of the Discover feed is a combination of new and older content. Discover doesn’t limit rankings based on when the content was published unlike Top Stories or Google News that need to content to be fresh (Less than 24 hours old)
Personalization
Google Discover is highly personalized. It takes in consideration your search history, web history, app history, browser history, what type of device you’re using, what type of interests and topics you follow or implicitly interested in, and your location history.
In fact, if location tracking is enabled, you will see recommendations based on that as well.
Reader Feedback
Readers have the option to like, hide, and follow the content topics recommended by Discover. this helps Google further refine the interests of the user and get better at recommending the right content.
Why is Google Discover Important?
Google Discover has the potential to drive traffic. In all likelihood, you are already seeing the numbers in your Google search console. Some publishers in India and Europe get as much as 90% of their organic clicks through Discover. It really has the potential to scale website traffic.
We believe that countries with a higher split of Android smartphone have a very high penetration of Google Discover. Also, for certain topics like sports or fashion, publishers focused on that niche get high Discover traffic. Reaching drastically from 15% all the way to 90%.
If you look at your Google Discover, you will see that the average CTR in Google Discover is almost seven folds as your other keywords. We’ve written a detailed guide on how publishers can optimize for Google Discover.
Can Google Discover Influence SERP?
Caution – Don’t Get Addicted To Google Discover Traffic
Traffic coming from Discover is supplemental traffic, and it can change at any point. With multiple publishers trying to get onto Discover and increasing audience topics of interest could cause clutter. Decreasing your chances of getting on Discover.
Google Discover does not conform to traditional SEO strategies, such as optimize for keywords and search intents. As a result, it is harder to accurately predict which content would perform better.
Depending solely on Google for traffic isn’t the best strategy. Any change in the algorithm could wreak havoc on your website traffic.
Google Discover is biased towards visually appealing content. If you primarily cover long-form articles, it could be a challenge to show up on Discover.
Also, there is very little tracking available to gauge content performance on Google Discover. The lack of metrics makes it difficult to assess the success of your publishing strategy.
Take away – The catch with social feeds is that since they have no queries, the vendor keeps focusing on certain metrics that are important for them. Engagement, CTR, meaningful interactions and so on.
Google mentioned engagement a lot of times so that is why Discover traffic is not a reliable traffic but still we can talk about some ways to optimize some ways to uncover certain secrets of Google Discover.
FAQs
Craft headlines that pique interest or evoke emotion. However, they should be accurate and free of sensationalism. Google penalizes clickbait and misleading titles. Each article should have a high-resolution hero image (at least 1200 px wide, 16:9 aspect ratio) that clearly reflects your story. Include proper Open Graph tags (og:title, og:image) for Discover to pull the best preview assets.
In Google Search Console, go to Performance → Discover report, you’ll see impressions, clicks, and average click-through rate (CTR) for eligible URLs.
A good practice is to compare Discover trends against Search to identify which type of content performs better on Discover.
Key metrics include impressions, click-through rate (CTR) to gauge headline/image effectiveness, average time on page to assess engagement. You can check bounce rate to flag misaligned expectations. Monitoring time on site can further help you understand which topics and formats work better in your niche.
Your content must be indexable by Google and comply with Discover’s content policies—no misleading previews, sensational or NSFW material, or promotion of regulated goods. While no special tags or structured data are required, focus on “people-first” content that demonstrates clarity, accuracy, and trustworthiness; avoid medical or scientific claims that contradict consensus, and adhere to Google News’ guidelines on harmful or offensive content.
Google Discover serves a personalized, scrollable feed of articles, videos, and other content based on a user’s interests and past behavior—without requiring a query—whereas traditional Search delivers results only in response to specific keywords. Unlike Google News, which emphasizes authoritative, timely news stories from vetted publishers, Discover surfaces a broader mix of content types (blogs, evergreen guides, videos) tailored algorithmically to each user’s profile and engagement signals.
Convert your visitors into an audience
