Discover and your website

Discover
is a part of Google Search that shows people content related to their interests, based on their
Web and App Activity.
This page explains more about how content may appear in Discover and best practices for site
owners to consider.

How content appears in Discover

Content is automatically eligible to appear in Discover if it is indexed by Google and meets
Discover’s content
policies. No special tags or structured data are required. Note that being
eligible to appear in Discover is not a guarantee of appearing.

Content that may appear in Discover includes a wide range of topics that aligns with a
person’s interests. Older content may appear if it’s helpful and relevant to individuals based
on their interests.

As part of Google Search, Discover makes use of many of the same signals and
systems used by Search to determine
what is helpful, people-first content. Given this, those looking for success with Discover
should review our advice on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.

To increase the likelihood of your content appearing in Discover, we recommend the following:

• Avoid clickbait and similar tactics to artificially inflate engagement by using misleading or exaggerated
  details in preview content (title, snippets, or images) to increase appeal, or by withholding
  crucial information required to understand what the content is about.
• Use page titles and headlines that capture the essence of the content.
• Avoid sensationalism tactics that manipulate appeal by catering to morbid curiosity, titillation, or
  outrage.
• Provide content that’s timely for current interests, tells a story well, or provides unique
  insights.
• Include compelling, high-quality images in your content that are relevant, especially large images that
  are more likely to generate visits from Discover. We recommend using images that meet the
  following specifications:
  • At least 1200 px wide
  • High resolution of more than 300,000 total pixels (for example, a 16:9 image that’s 1280×720
    pixels would have 921,600 total pixels and satisfies this specification)
  • 16×9 aspect ratio
    
  • Enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting,
    or by using AMP
• Use either schema.org markup
  or the og:image meta tag to specify a large image that’s
  relevant and representative of the web page, as this can influence which image is chosen as the
  thumbnail in Discover. Learn more about how to specify your preferred image.
  • Avoid using generic images (for example, your site logo) in the schema.org markup or og:image meta tag.
  • For best results, avoid using text-heavy images in the schema.org markup or og:image meta tag.
• Provide an overall great page experience. For more advice, check out our help page on
  Understanding page experience in Google Search results.

To deliver a good user experience, Discover seeks to present content that’s suitable for
interest-based feeds, such as articles and videos, as well as filter out content
that’s not wanted or that might confuse readers. For example, Discover might not
recommend job applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, or satirical
content without any context. Discover makes use of
SafeSearch but beyond that filters
out content that might be seen as shocking or unexpected.

Why Discover traffic might change over time

Traffic from Discover is less predictable or dependable when compared to keyword-driven
search visits. Given its serendipitous nature, you should consider traffic from Discover as
supplemental to your keyword-driven search traffic. Here are some reasons why Discover traffic
may fluctuate:

• Changing interests: Discover is designed and always improving to show content
  aligned with what someone is interested in, which in part can be based on their search
  activity. If someone is no longer as interested in a particular topic—perhaps reflected
  by a decline in searching for it—their Discover feed might show other content they’re
  more interested in. In turn, this may cause changes in traffic for publishers.
• Content types: Discover has and continues to adjust the types of content that might
  appear on the feed to better align with what people are looking for. Discover regularly
  shows content including but not limited to sports, health, entertainment, and lifestyle content
  from across the open web.
• Updates to Google Search: Periodically, we also make
  updates to Search
  designed to better provide people with links to helpful content. Because Discover is an
  extension of Search, updates can sometimes produce traffic changes. If you notice changes to
  your website’s performance after an update, it may be useful to review our documentation on
  Google Search’s core updates and your website.

Monitor your performance on Discover

If you have content on Discover, you can monitor your performance using the
Performance
report for Discover. This report shows impressions, clicks, and CTR for any of your
content that has appeared on Discover in the last 16 months, as long as your data reaches
a minimum threshold of impressions. The Discover performance report
includes traffic from Chrome,
and fully tracks a site’s Discover traffic across all surfaces where users
interact with Discover.