What Does it Take to Rank in Google Discover?

Google Discover is a product Google launched in 2018 that shows mobile users a highly personalised, Al-driven feed of content from across the web, based on topics and articles they find most interesting. With Google Discover, users don’t need to search for anything, the product is a form of ‘query less search’, meaning the feed of content displayed is based on the personal interests of the user alone without any search queries being entered.

So, why does Google Discover matter for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Even though Google Discover is not currently a major point of discussion in the SEO industry, it should not be ignored by SEO professionals. Any site can be eligible to appear in Google Discover as there is significant traffic from not only news publishers but also e-commerce, finance, healthcare, and technology.

Discover Ranking Factors and Eligibility

To rank in Google Discover, you must publish content that is highly valuable and engaging for users. Your content needs to be engaging enough so that Google will determine the content as worthy of being displayed in their Discover feed. The article must contain a high-quality image of 1200px or more and must contain a meta tag ‘max image-preview: large’, which is done automatically using WordPress or Yoast, otherwise the article must use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework.

Any content is eligible to appear in Google Discover. There is no specific “noindex” tag or method of using robots.txt. to stop Google from crawling your site for Discover specifically.

Consider Discover as its own source of organic traffic that behaves more like a social media platform rather than a search engine. The methods that tend to work best on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms may drive more Discover traffic than standard SEO best practices.

Analyse the Performance

There is only one way to currently analyse Google Discover performance, and this is through the use of Google Search Console (GSC), via the Discover tab in the Performance report. The Discover tab will only appear if your GSC property has received traffic from Discover during the specified timeframe.

What to Avoid

While Google Discover can become a wonderful source for organic traffic, it is vital not to create an entire business model out of relying on traffic from Discover. This traffic is very unpredictable and is never guaranteed. Discover is also affected by any Core Updates and other updates Google undertakes, so it could possibly disappear overnight.

For further information regarding Google Discover, and other SEO practices, contact WebEagles on 1300 123 808, and one of our friendly digital marketing experts will be able to answer any questions. If you are interested in learning the basics of SEO, sign up for our SEO 101: Workshop via the button below.