How to Succeed in Google Discover!

Before the user enters a query,Google Discover Here’s how websites from all walks of life can use Discover.

Google DiscoverGoogle Discover (formerly known as Google Feed) is a personalized content feed created by Google that proactively presents relevant content to users. While traditional search requires users to enter a query, Google Discover predicts user behavior to surface new and interesting content.

Discover is available to mobile users on the Google App, Android devices, and Google.com on all mobile browsers (when signed in to a Google Account).

In addition to providing the latest news, Google Discover is designed to make it "easier than ever to explore your interests" and is an initiative to shift the focus of search from immediate information to understanding more complex user journeys.Part of a bigger plan.

With unlimited access to information, Google is trying to filter and highlight content for drifting Internet users.

Google Discover: How does it work?

According to the product announcement, there are two main mechanisms used to determine what content appears in Google Discover:

• useGoogle News AI/MLBringing a variety of perspectives to the latest news.
• useTopic layer in knowledge graphto understand user interests and how they progress over time.

User interests

AlthoughGoogleConsidered the latest innovation in “query-less search,” but understanding a single user replaces understanding a single query.

Therefore, the user becomes the central focus of Discover.

Google Discover automatically displays personalized content based on a user's:

• Search history.
• Browser history.
• App activity.
• Location (depending on your Google Account settings and privacy settings).

Google Discover uses your information to identify and display topics, or "interests," that Google thinks are relevant to you.

What's interesting in Google Discover?

To get a deeper understanding of Google Discover interests, I looked at over 700 Google Discover interests provided by members of the SEO community.

While this is a very small sample size compared to all the potential benefits, there are some notable observations.

Interests related to sports and entertainment are most common

While my Discover feed focuses on who former Bachelor Peter Weber is dating, I imagine everyone else’s feed is filled with the latest sports updates.

It focuses mainly on hobbies and activities

Whatever you do for fun — whether it’s baking or beekeeping — you’ll likely see content about your favorite after-get off work activities.

Brands also have a strong influence

Nearly all submissions included a specific brand or local business.

While Discover is designed to recommend new content to users, it will also remember your preferred stores and restaurants.

SEO Has Its Own Category

We love SEO so much, it has its own category.

User Input

Users can also provide direct feedback to further customize their feeds by following or unfollowing topics, selecting “show more” or “show less,” and opting out of seeing content from certain publishers.
Sometimes, Google will directly prompt users for feedback.

Isn’t Google Discover just news?

Well, a little bit.
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One of the goals of Google Discover is to provide fresh content, and scrolling through the Discover feed is mostly news.
However, when customers from other industries began toGoogle Search Console When you see Discover traffic in your Google Search Console (GSC), it’s time to investigate.
I analyzed Google Discover traffic to over 11,000 URLs from 62 domains over a 12-month period. Of those 11,000 URLs:

• 46% from a news website.
• 44% from an e-commerce website.
• 7% from entertainment website.
• 2% from a travel website.

The remaining 1% come from other industries, including:

• B2B.
• car.
• educate.
• finance.
• healthy.

Research Results

1. The news website received 99% hits

Although News accounted for less than half of the URLs analyzed (46%), it received 99% of discovery clicks and received significantly more clicks per page.

One news domain in the analysis saw over 30% of its total web traffic coming from Discovery, while other publishers reported that Google Discovery brought in more traffic than organic search in some months.

News content is likely to be shown to a large, broad audience, while content from other industries is targeted to smaller audiences based on specific interests.

Google emphasized this philosophy in its announcement of Google Discover, saying, “When it comes to news, we think it’s important that everyone has access to the same information.”

Key points: Google Discover is a major traffic driver for news publishers and can be used to reach a large and broad audience.

2. Blog posts are common in all other industries

For non-news sites, the remaining 1%'s hits (still totaling over 1 million over the past 12 months) were spread across different types of content.

The most popular content type across industries is blog posts.

Blog topics that appear in Google Discover are highly relevant to specific interests/hobbies, such as hiking, makeup, and nutrition.

also:

• 49%’s e-commerce website clicks through to product pages, which include product category and product detail pages.
• Pages with video as the main content (i.e., actor interviews, movie trailers) had the highest click-through rate (16%).
• Special offers, primarily travel or hotel deals with limited time/availability pricing, accounted for the largest share of hits to travel sites (53%).

Key points:Non-news content is very interest-focused and may be shown to a smaller, more targeted audience.

3. Discovery content often has a short shelf life

Consistent with Discover's focus on delivering fresh content, most URLs in this study received traffic within only 3-4 days, with the majority of that traffic occurring within 1-2 days of publication.

However, some more mature, evergreen content can drive longer-term traffic.

This is a result of Google Discover serving up evergreen content to meet new or changing user interests.

In the case where I saw more mature, evergreen content appearing in my personal discovery feed, I searched for similar topics 2-3 days ago.

Key points: Most pages in Discover have a short shelf life of about 3-4 days, but evergreen content can drive long-term traffic.

4. Users respond well to discovery content

One of the most striking features of Google Discover is the high click-through rate (CTR), which is 11% among all the pages analyzed.

Excluding news sites (which make up the bulk of the data), the average hit rate was 6%.

Looking at the same 62 domains, the CTR for traditional search is 4%.

Unfortunately, these numbers aren't directly comparable because CTR is calculated as clicks ÷ impressions = CTR, and impressions are measured differently in Discover than in traditional search.

Here’s how:

• When a user opens a search results page containing the URL(even if the result is not scrolled into view), the URL is recordedSearch impressions.
• only When the card is foundScroll into viewIt will only be recorded whenDiscover Impressions

Key points: Page click-through rates in Google Discover are higher than in traditional search; however, this may be due to differences in how impressions are measured rather than differences in user behavior.

How to connect with users on Google Discover

In traditional search, the query serves as the connection point between the user’s need and relevant content (i.e., the user is hungry and searches for [food near me], and Google displays local restaurants).

Google Discover surfaces content before user needs are fulfilled, “driven by the strength of the match between article content and user interests.”

Without keyword research and query reporting, the traditional content creation process is limited—but there are still ways to increase your chances of appearing in Discover.

Mobile-friendly

Google Discover is only accessible on mobile devices, so this is pretty obvious.

But by checking Google Search ConsoleMobile Usability ReportAnd it's always good to cover your bases by making sure there are no mistakes.

Focus on content around entities

An interest is an entity, object, or concept that can be uniquely identified.

They can be anything from general hobbies to niche interests to specific brands and businesses.

useEntity Explorer for Marketing Center, you can view the relationships between entities and see which entities are associated with your brand, industry, products, and more.

Determine which entities serve as the connection points between your brand and your users.

Create content that is relevant, useful, and interesting to your audience

You are no longer constrained by search volume.

Embrace this new found freedom.

Once you’ve identified the connection points – get specific and go deep.

Interest-based content is personalized, so write content that resonates with your most passionate users.

One way to do this is to identify intersections and relationships between topics (i.e., “best ski resorts near Pennsylvania,” “winter running tips”).

Bonus points if you can tie your content back to current events.

For example, this blog post from REI focuses on outdoor recreation, which is closely related to REI's products and the interests of its audience.

It is inInterest in “social distancing”Released before reaching its peak.

Includes high-quality images

In addition to creating content that your users will find interesting, the best way to promote your content on Discover is to use a 1,200-pixel wideLarge, high-quality images.

According to Google, Discover cards with large images have a 51% higher click-through rate.

For more ways to optimize images in Discover, check out Brodie Clark's case studyGoogle Discover: One image might be worth 1,000 clicks.

Revisit your video strategy

Videos are prominent in Google Discover, which is consistent with Google’sFocusThis is consistent with the move away from text and toward more intuitive ways of finding information.

While video only accounted for 17% of content in this analysis, this does not include data from YouTube, which hosts the majority of videos that appear in Google Discover.

This may be difficult to measure, but creatingEngaging Videos and Optimizing Your YouTube ChannelHelps increase your brand presence in Google Discover—and in traditional search, too, since desktop search results for 19% include a video carousel, with 92%'s videos coming from YouTube.

• Google Discover is a personalized content feed that learns a user’s interests and how they evolve over time.
• News sites receive the most clicks from Google Discover, but it’s not just news — all industries can use Google Discover to connect with users.
• Fresh content has a higher chance of appearing in Discover, but some evergreen works can drive long-term traffic.
• To be successful in Google Discover, content creators should:
  • Make sure your pages are mobile-friendly.
  • Focus content on entities that make sense for their brand and target audience.
  • Create interesting, relevant, and useful content for your most passionate users.
  • Include meaningful visual content (i.e. high-quality images and videos).