Google Discover – How to use it for SEO purposes

If you've ever used the Google search engine on your tablet or smart­phone, you know that there’s usually a list of reports with big images, often from news sites, directly under the search bar. These Google Discover reports are called “cards”. If you tap on one, you’ll be taken to a website that contains the cor­re­spond­ing in­for­ma­tion.

Here, we’ll tell you about the dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties between the standard Google Search and Google Discover, which websites Google Discover’s search engine op­ti­miza­tion is helpful for, what you have to par­tic­u­lar­ly pay attention to when doing SEO in this way, and the special role that pictures play in this regard.

Google Discover is a new de­vel­op­ment for the old Google news feed. Now, content from all websites can be taken into account, instead of just news outlets. Orig­i­nal­ly, Google Discover worked only on Android devices, but it can now also be used on Apple iOS devices.

The standard Google Search feature and Google Discover com­ple­ment each other but are different concepts based on the same tech­niques. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, Google Discover can call on content from all websites that are indexed by the Google search engine. For both Google Search and Google Discover, the benefit for the user takes priority; users should always be shown content that is more useful to them.

While a user has to manually enter one or several search terms to launch a Google Search, Google Discover actually works the opposite way round – Google actively suggests content that the user might find in­ter­est­ing. On a basic level, Discover works just the same as other news feeds, such as those in social media. The dif­fer­ence here is that the Google algorithm decides what content is more relevant, meaning that active input from users is no longer nec­es­sar­i­ly required.

The biggest question when it comes to Google Discover is as to what criteria Google uses to show what content to which users. As Google keeps its al­go­rithms and the number, type, and weighting of its various pa­ra­me­ters secret and is also con­stant­ly updating them, no general right answer can be given for this question. The fact is that Google, when de­ter­min­ing user interest for Discover, uses in par­tic­u­lar data from Search, location and voluntary in­for­ma­tion provided by users.

Google Discover doesn’t take content from any old website. In fact, its selection criteria are actually quite strict: first and foremost, Discover targets very big websites with lots of separate pages that contain so­phis­ti­cat­ed ex­pec­ta­tions in terms of spe­cial­ized knowledge, com­pe­ten­cy, and re­li­a­bil­i­ty. In this regard, Google created its SEO guide­lines in 2018 with the acronym E-A-T (expertise, au­thor­i­ta­tive­ness, trust­wor­thi­ness), and these guide­lines are used for both the Discover feature and standard Google searches. In practice, Google Discover shows content from news sites, magazines, or spe­cial­ized journals quite fre­quent­ly, as Google assumes that such or­ga­ni­za­tions are widely trusted by users.

The question that owners of smaller websites have to ask them­selves is: is it even worth the effort to try to optimize a website for Google Discover? In many cases, the answer is no. If, for example, you have a small, static website with just a few subpages where new, valuable content is not published every couple of days, you really don’t need to worry about Google Discover at the moment, or even actively look into it at all. In this case, it will simply be enough to do your regular SEO homework and stay abreast of the basics of search engine op­ti­miza­tion. For basic in­for­ma­tion on key terms in SEO, have a look through our SEO glossary.

What owners of Google websites advise in terms of Discover can be divided into several fields with general tips on search engine op­ti­miza­tion. However, there is one exception: the im­por­tance of images. What this means is that Google Discover, unlike standard Google Search, is an excellent way to monitor the com­pe­ti­tion and to use this as a basis to develop ap­pro­pri­ate SEO measures.

User ac­cep­tance of Google Discover is primarily based on helpful images. It can easily be seen that images take up a lot of space on Discover cards. Text without a cor­re­spond­ing image has prac­ti­cal­ly no chance of being con­sid­ered. However, planning a good picture to go with in­ter­est­ing text alone is not enough: Google specif­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends large images with a dimension of at least 1,200 pixels. Fur­ther­more, the setting max-image-preview:large must be activated on the relevant site or AMPs must be used.

To activate the max-image-preview:large setting, you need to open up the code of your website and make a small change in the head section of the site. The max-image-preview:large setting, as shown here, must be added as a “robots meta tag” in the relevant head section:

If a max-image-preview tag is already in the head section, simply add the setting “large”. You can do this by replacing the original setting, e.g., “standard” or “non”, with the tag “large”:

is replaced with:

With the max-image-preview:large setting, the Google bots that visit the site know the maximum size that an image can be displayed as a Google preview. This isn’t just a re­quire­ment for Google Discover, but is actually important for all other types of Google search results, including the regular text search, image search, and Google Assistant.

As well as the technical aspects, you should also take into account high image quality and use in­ter­est­ing and relevant images. For example, Google will not use website logos as pictures in Discover cards. Also in terms of Google Discover, it is important to plan for images with SEO-friendly alt text (alt at­trib­ut­es). It is also helpful to give the images file names that are related to the text. For more in­for­ma­tion on this, read our article on image SEO.

The other SEO measures that Google rec­om­mends for Google Discover are generally more or less the same as the general search engine op­ti­miza­tion guide­lines drawn up by Google. In terms of Discover in par­tic­u­lar, Google rec­om­mends relevant headlines and rep­re­sen­ta­tive page titles, provided that this is not clickbait. The text and content should be modern, tell an in­ter­est­ing story, and give unique im­pres­sions.

Google also does not ap­pre­ci­ate being “tricked” in terms of Discover, and will sometimes par­tic­u­lar­ly heavily punish attempts to show mis­lead­ing or ex­ag­ger­at­ed previews for content. Fur­ther­more, it is dis­cour­aged to capture user attention via provo­ca­tion, outrage, or “morbid curiosity”.

For Discover, Google specif­i­cal­ly states the im­por­tance of in­for­ma­tion on authors and sources. Trust is earned from both users and Google if the name of the person behind the content and their in­for­ma­tion sources are published in as clear and trans­par­ent a way as possible. The inclusion of contact details (email address, phone number, address) also increases user trust and is seen pos­i­tive­ly. What is also important here is that all the in­for­ma­tion is correct, as incorrect, con­tra­dic­to­ry, or missing in­for­ma­tion can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. This also includes third-party websites, such as di­rec­to­ries that list your contact details.

For detailed in­for­ma­tion on SEO for Discover, Google itself has written articles on “Google Discover and your website” as well as Discover content policies.

Google Search Console (GSC) is an important online tool to make your website SEO friendly. Website managers who see the value in SEO are generally already reg­is­tered with Google Search Console.

Among its services, GSC offers per­for­mance reports for standard Google searches, Google news, and, as of recently, also for Google Discover. However, per­for­mance reports for Discover will only be shown in the Google Search Console if your website has reached a minimum number of specific “Discover im­pres­sions” over the last 16 months. This basically means the number of users who had a specific Discover card shown to them. Only one im­pres­sion is ever counted per session. As well as the im­pres­sions, the Google Discover per­for­mance report shows you the metrics “Clicks” and “CTR” (click through rate, click rate, or clicks per im­pres­sion).

A click is counted as a user clicking on the relevant Discover card and visiting the website from which the cor­re­spond­ing content was displayed. If the user simply shares the card, this is not counted as a click. The metric CTR tells you how often on average users have to see a card until they click on it and open the content. For example, a click rate of two percent means that, out of 100 users who were shown a specific card, two of them actually clicked on it and visited the website.

In its per­for­mance report for Discover, Google itself gives more in­for­ma­tion about how these metrics are presented and evaluated in the Google Search Console. It is important to con­tin­u­ous­ly track SEO measures for their success if your goal is to con­stant­ly be improving your content for Google Discover.