As webmasters, we are all familiar with Google Feed. Google Feed is now Google Discover which allows webmasters to create a personalized content feed for their readers. It let users discover new and interesting content even before they enter a query. Content creators and marketers can leverage Google Discover to proactively serves users with relevant content.
Let’s discover more about Google Discover, how it works, and how to get and support your content in it. In this post, we will learn:
- What is Google Discover?
- How does Google Discover Work?
- What’s the future of search with Discover?
- How to Make Your Content Visible and connect with users in Google Discover?
- Improve on E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
- Focus Content Around Entities with Structured Data
- Make It Visually Appealing
- Monitor Your Discover Performance in Google Search Console
What is Google Discover?
Google Discover provides users with a new way to search. Actually, it’s a query-less discovery of content that matches users’ preferences and interests, not a search. Unlike traditional search, which requires users to enter a query, Google Discover anticipates user behavior in order to show relevant and interesting content.
Discover is a mobile experience and mobile users can access Discover via the Google App and Google.com on all mobile browsers after logging into their Google Account. Google Discover, in addition to providing the most recent news through suggestions in users’ feeds, aims to make “exploring their interests easier than ever” to provide a better and personalized content experience on the web.
Google Discover recommends new content to users based on their search history and interactions with the Discover app. It also learns what they like so that it can provide even more relevant content and user experience the next time they use it. Google also looks at users’ location history and settings to provide relevant Discover feed as per their needs.
With a personalized Discover feed, Google is shifting the focus of search from instant information to filtering and highlighting content for a more relevant search experience.
But what is here for you as a webmaster? How can you make better and shape up your content as per Google Discover to provide a personalized content feed to users?
How does Google Discover Work?
Google Discover is an intelligent tool that learns and understands the ways users search on the web and what they like in order to provide them with the most relevant or timely content. Furthermore, it does so without their intervention. However, users can follow specific topics or entities to build their profile and set limits on what Discover should find for them.
Users can also share direct feedback to further personalize their Discover feed by:
- Following or unfollowing topics
- Selecting “show less” or “show more” in settings
- Opting out of seeing content from specific publishers
Google occasionally ask the user for feedback directly to improve their experience for querry-less searches.
According to an official announcement, Google Discover displays content based on two primary mechanisms:
- Google News AI/ML: Brings a variety of perspectives to surface news posts in Discover Feed, depending on user behavior and activity.
- Topic Layer in the Knowledge Graph: This allows Google Discover to better understand user preferences and how they change over time.
With an aim to achieve “query-less search” in the Discover feed of a user, Google now focused on understanding the individual user instead of search queries. As a result, the user takes center stage in Discover.
Google Discover suggests personalized feed content based on a user’s:
- Browser History
- Search History
- Web/App Activity
- Location and Privacy Settings
Google Discover is primarily concerned with hobbies and activities of a user to surface content in their feed. Google follows a user’s interest-based on information collected to display the most relevant topics in the feed.
What’s the future of search with Discover?
In recent years, searching has evolved beyond simply entering a query into a search bar and receiving a simple page with ten blue links. Today, search considers the entire world around a user’s activity and even turns it into an interface to surface the most relevant query-less searches.
Google Discover eliminates the query from the equation and replaces it with an intelligent system that suggests new content based on the user’s interests and activities on the web. It’s an entirely new way of discovering and engaging with content.
Discover’s goal is to bring users into contact with new but relevant content on the internet. The content you need will always be present in your Discover’s feed, even when you didn’t realize you needed it. It doesn’t take long for the system to figure out if you’re looking for something else, like when you’re planning a movie or vacation with family or what’s happening around in the games of your favorite sport. Everything will be up there in your content feed without even entering a single query.
Your recent actions and web history indicate that things are changing, and new, timely, and evergreen content will appear for your reading pleasure. Everyone will have a personal and unique experience with Google Discover. Discover will even consider the user’s prior knowledge of a subject. If they are just getting started with a topic, they’ll find content for beginners. You’ll get more advanced topics to cover a subject if you’re more advanced with your understanding.
How to Make Your Content Visible and connect with users in Google Discover?
Getting your content into Google Discover is similar to your regular SEO strategies to make it visible in search results. All of the fundamental principles of SEO apply here too, so do whatever you do to optimize your content for search ranking. Here’re a few regular things you need to do while creating content to make it visible in Google Discover:
Make Great Content
Like you do in SEO, content is the focal point when you look to get your content in Discover. High-quality content that answers your readers’ questions could add value to the Discover feed. The best way to get into Discover is to create content that is superior to your competitors. If you write on general topics and you have a lot of competition, you should prioritize quality. Research your target audience, competitors, and domain to create the best possible content on a relevant topic.
Write Timely Stuff
Discover has the ability to find the content at any time, including newsworthy content. If you publish your content in a timely manner, it has a better chance of performing well in Discover. Look for popular or trending topics in your niche and write about them. But Discover isn’t just for new content, high-quality, evergreen content has the potential to perform well.
Improve on E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) are key factors in determining how reliable a piece of content or its authors are. According to Google’s documentation on how to get your content into Discover:
Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Those looking to improve E-A-T can consider some of the same questions we encourage site owners to consider for Search. While Search and Discover are different, the overall principles for E-A-T as it applies to content within them are similar.
Of course, E-A-T isn’t just a factor for Discover; it’s also becoming more and more useful for Google in weeding out misleading and, in some cases, downright potentially dangerous content from the index.
You must prove your expertise in your content. Make sure your readers understand what you’re talking about and why they should believe in you. Let them know you’re the expert on this topic!
Be Mobile-Friendly
Google Discover is only available on mobile devices via the Google app or Google.com on mobile browsers, so it is quite obvious you need to improve your site design and make it mobile-friendly. If you want to appear in your potential reader’s Discover feed, make sure your site is perfectly responsive on mobile devices. It must provide an excellent user experience and load quickly. It’s always a good idea to double-check the Mobile Usability Report in Google Search Console to ensure there are no errors.
Focus Content Around Entities with Structured Data
You should always provide as much information about your entities as possible when writing something. Though you don’t need to do anything different, it does make sense to ensure that your Schema implementation is flawless. Provide great structured data to support your entities to let search engines get a better sense of what your content is about.
Entities, objects, or concepts that can be uniquely identified in your writing are referred to as interests. They can range from broad interests to niche interests to specific brands and businesses to support your content with structured data. Get a quick look at relationships between entities to determine which entities are associated with your brand, business, values, products, services, and so on to connect with your readers.
Make It Visually Appealing
The visual aspect is one of the most important aspects of optimizing your content for Google Discover. Discover is a visual platform, and you have to make your content visually appealing to attract your target readers. People swiping their way through a feed, looking for content that looks appealing.
The main image of your content is one of Discover’s eye-catchers. Make sure to include high-quality and relevant images that are at least 1,200 pixels wide in your content for a better appearance in your reader’s Discover feed. According to Google data, Discover Cards with large images increased the click-through rate by 5%.
Monitor Your Discover Performance in Google Search Console
Google Search Console not only provides insights into how your site performs in search, but also in Discover. In Discover, there is a dedicated tab for analyzing the performance of your content. Here you can look at overall traffic as well as traffic generated by specific posts over a period of time to check your performance. Make better decisions about your Discover content by using these insights to learn more about what your content does and how it performs.
Conclusion
Google Discover is a personalized content feed that can track user interests over time and understand how they change. To succeed in Google Discover, as a webmaster, you should make necessary changes in your content strategy that are relevant to your brand and target audience.
