Many publishers are increasingly reliant on Google Discover for their daily traffic numbers, but some are playing a risky game.
Discover is a feed of recommended articles that users of Android phones see when they open their browser, or iPhone users in their Google app.
The articles recommended by Discover align with what Google knows about each user’s interests, favourite websites, and recent searches. This results in a highly personalised feed full of content the user is likely to click on and read.
Google says that any article has a chance to appear in Discover, as long as it aligns with their content and quality policies. These are vaguely worded, but are almost identical to Google’s content policies for news.
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For many news publishers around the world Google Discover is now their primary source of traffic. Research from NewzDash, a news performance monitoring tool, shows that on average Discover accounts for 55% of publishers’ total Google traffic. This is up from 41% in a previous study.
With Google as the dominant source of traffic to most publishers, this means Discover is the single largest channel sending visitors to publishing sites.
Clickbait headlines about personal finance seem to work on Discover
Yet it’s a risky strategy to rely on Discover traffic. Several Googlers are on record saying sites shouldn’t rely on Discover. In my own experience working with publishers around the world, Discover is a highly volatile channel that can send massively different traffic numbers from one day to the next.
Additionally, Discover is especially susceptible to the whims of Google’s algorithm updates. Sites can see their entire Discover traffic evaporate overnight, without any explanation or underlying cause, just because Google has decided to slightly tweak its algorithmic levers.
Yet the temptation to maximise Discover traffic is too great for many publishers.
Once a publisher finds a specific topic that consistently generates significant visitor numbers from Discover, it’s seductive to go all-in on that topic and generate daily articles even if there’s very little of substance to say.
This is evident in the daily output of many British publishing sites. Topics that are popular on Discover – especially so-called YMYL (Your Money Your Life, content focused on personal finance and health) – are covered on a daily basis.
These articles often feature headlines that seem designed not to rank in Google’s regular search ecosystem, where straightforward factual headlines tend to win, but to elicit clicks with emotive phrasing bordering on outright clickbait.
And these tactics work. For a while at least.
Creating content for Google Discover could be race to the bottom
Creating content optimised only for Discover is a race to the bottom, with articles making promises with attractive headlines yet barely containing any meaningful information churned out by the hundreds on a daily basis by many large UK news websites.
We’ve been through this hamster wheel before, and it didn’t end well. Not so long ago, many publishers chased after Google search clicks with similar articles around celebrities’ net worth, bizarre ‘scandals’ that were often entirely invented, filler content around the latest Google doodle, entire pieces extracting the deepest insights from a D-list celebrity’s whimsical social media comment, and more of such churnalism intended purely to drive clicks from Google’s search results.
All this backfired spectacularly when Google started rolling out algorithm updates designed to deprive such content of visibility in their search results. Publishers experienced first-hand how fickle Google’s whims can be, when content that was previously almost pinned to the top of Google’s news carousels suddenly became toxic and actively harmful for a website’s long-term viability.
I fear we may soon go through the exact same with Discover. In fact, I’ve already seen publishers suffer greatly at the hands of Google’s ‘Helpful Content Updates’, which are now part of their core algorithms. More sites seem destined to follow.
Chasing after Discover clicks is likely to be another short-lived tactic for publishers desperate to claim as many visits as possible in the short term, regardless of the potential long-term effects their site may suffer.
Some publishers with multiple news websites under their wing may see this as an acceptable risk. If one site gets hit by an algorithm update, they’ve learned exactly where to draw the line and can amend their tactics on another site.
But if your portfolio of news sites is small, taking such risks is highly irresponsible. The effects of an algorithm update can be devastating and extremely hard to recover from.
Sustainable tactics for Google Discover require genuine effort
A more viable approach to Discover, which is also recommended by Google, is to see visits from this channel as ‘bonus traffic’. When advising clients, I often recommend putting Discover visits into a separate bucket entirely, separating it from your site’s core traffic channels.
There are ways to optimise for Discover in a sustainable fashion. While there will always be a degree of volatility to the channel’s daily numbers, with the right approach you can ensure your continued presence on people’s feed. Not every article will be a champion, but you can increase the probability of driving meaningful visits from Discover without risking an algorithmic backlash at a future date.
Reliable Discover optimisation tactics centre around content focusing on people’s needs and interests, while providing real value and insights.
The concept of ‘information gain’ is critical to success in Discover as well as in Google’s broader news rankings. Information gain is about adding knowledge and insight to a news topic. If you’re merely reporting what others are also saying, then your content has low information gain. If, however, you can bring something new to the table – a different perspective, fresh information not previously covered, or an expert opinion – then you are contributing to the topic’s overall knowledge and have created information gain.
Combine this with headlines that find a balance between factual and emotive, good images to attract attention without resorting to fakery, and an excellent user experience that encourages visitors to return to your site, and you have an excellent recipe for sustained success in Discover.
Winning in Google’s rapidly changing search ecosystem has never been more challenging. Publishers should be wary of chasing after cheap clicks, be that on Discover or on search, as that approach has repeatedly shown to be a dead end.
It takes genuine effort to build a news brand that your users will want to engage with time and again. This is true on every channel where your audience reads your content, and Discover is no exception.
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