Before the user enters a query,Google Discover New and interesting content will be provided. Here's how websites across a variety of industries take advantage of Discover.
Google Discover(formerly known as Google Feed) is a personalized content feed created by Google that proactively delivers relevant content to users. While traditional search requires users to enter a query, Google Discover predicts user behavior to surface new and interesting content.
Google App,Android Discover is available to mobile users on Google.com on devices and all mobile browsers (when signed in to a Google Account).
In addition to delivering the latest news, Google Discover is designed to make it “easier than ever to discover your interests” and is an initiative that shifts the focus of search from instant information to understanding more complex user journeysPart of a larger 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
AlthoughGoogledConsidered the latest innovation in "query-free 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 the user's:
- Search history.
- Browser history.
- Application activities.
- Location (depending on your Google Account settings and privacy settings).
Google Discover uses your information to identify and display topics, known as "interests," that Google believes are relevant to you.
What’s interesting about Google Discover
To gain a deeper understanding of Google Discover interests, I reviewed over 700 Google Discover interests (contributed by members of the SEO community).
Although this is a very small sample size compared to all potential benefits, there are some notable observations.
Interests related to sports and entertainment are most common
While my Discover feed focuses on people former Bachelor Peter Weber is dating, I imagine everyone else's feeds are filled with the latest sports updates.
It focuses mainly on hobbies and activities
No matter what you do for fun—whether it's baking or beekeeping—you've probably seen content about your favorite after-get off work activities.
Brands also have a strong influence
Nearly all submissions feature specific brands or local businesses.
While Discover is designed to recommend new content to users, it still remembers 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 feed by following or unfollowing topics, selecting "Show More" or "Show Less," and choosing not to see content from certain publishers.
Sometimes, Google will directly prompt users for feedback.
Isn’t Google Discover just for news?
Well, sort of.
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One of the goals of Google Discover is to provide fresh content, and scrolling through the Discover feed, it's mostly news.
However, when customers from other industries began toGoogle Search Console When you see Discover traffic in (GSC), it's time to investigate.
I analyzed Google Discover traffic for more than 11,000 URLs from 62 domains over a 12-month period. Among these 11,000 URLs:
- 46% From news website.
- 44% from e-commerce website.
- 7% from entertainment website.
- 2% from travel website.
The remaining 1% comes from other industries, including:
- B2B.
- car.
- educate.
- finance.
- healthy.
Research results
1. The news website received 99% clicks
Although news represented less than half of the analyzed URLs (46%), it received 99% discovery clicks and received significantly more clicks per page.
One news domain in the analysis saw over 30% of total web traffic come from Discovery, while other publishers reported that Google Discovery drove more traffic than organic search in a matter of 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 large and broad audiences.
2. Blog posts are common in all other industries
For non-news sites, the remaining 1% hits (still totaling over 1 million in the past 12 months) are scattered across different types of content.
The most popular content types across industries areblogarticle.
Blog topics shown 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) have the highest click-through rate (16%).
- Special offers, primarily travel or hotel deals with limited time/availability pricing, account for the largest proportion of clicks on 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 only received traffic within 3-4 days, with the majority of traffic occurring 1-2 days after publication.
However, some more established, evergreen content can drive longer-term traffic.
This is the result of Google Discover providing evergreen content to meet new or changing user interests.
I searched for similar topics 2-3 days ago before I saw more mature, evergreen content popping up in my personal discovery feed.
Key points: Most pages in Discover have a short shelf life, around 3-4 days, but evergreen content can drive long-term traffic.
4. Users respond well to discovery content
One of the most outstanding features of Google Discover is the high click-through rate (CTR), which was 11% among all analyzed pages.
Excluding news sites (which make up the bulk of the data), the average click-through rate is 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 Discovery than in traditional search.
Here's how to do it:
- When a user opens a search results page that contains a URL(even if the result does not scroll into view), the URL'sSearch impressions.
- only When the card is foundscroll to viewWill only be recorded whenDiscover impressions
Key points: Page click-through rates are higher in Google Discover than in traditional search; however, this may be due to differences in the way impressions are measured rather than differences in user behavior.
How to connect with users on Google Discover
In traditional search, the query serves as a connection point between the user's needs and related content (i.e. the user is hungry and searches for [food near me] and Google shows local restaurants).
Google Discover displays 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 showing up in Discover.
Mobile friendly
Google Discover is only accessible on mobile devices, so that's obvious.
But by checking Google Search Console'sMobile availability reportAnd it's always good to make sure there are no mistakes to cover your bases.
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 relationships between entities and see which entities are associated with your brand, industry, product, and more.
Determine which entities serve as connection points between your brand and your users.
Create content that is relevant, useful and interesting to your audience
You are no longer bound by search volume.
Embrace this newfound freedom.
Once you identify 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 to current events.
For example, this REI blog post focuses on outdoor recreation, which is closely related to REI's products and the interests of its audience.
it is inInterest in “social distance”Posted before peaking.
Includes high quality images
In addition to creating content that your users will find interesting, the best way to promote content on Discover is to use at least 1,200 pixels wideLarge high quality images.
According to Google, Discover cards with large images have a 5% increase in click-through rates.
For more ways to optimize images in Discover, check out Brodie Clark's case studyGoogle Discover: One image may be worth 1,000 clicks.
Revisit your video strategy
Video plays an important role in Google Discover, which is consistent with Google'sfocus onConsistent with the shift from text to more intuitive ways of finding information.
While video only accounts for 17% of content in this analysis, this does not include Youtube data, YouTube 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's presence in Google Discover—and in traditional searches, too, because 19%'s desktop search results include a carousel of videos, including 92%'s videos from YouTube.
- Google Discover is a personalized content feed that understands your users' interests and how they develop over time.
- News sites get the most clicks from Google Discover, but it's not just news—all industries can use Google Discover to connect with their users.
- Fresh content has a higher chance of appearing in Discover, but some evergreen pieces can drive long-term traffic.
- To be successful in Google Discover, content creators should:
- Make sure the page is mobile-friendly.
- Focus your content on entities that are meaningful to your 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).