Google Discover: How Pages Get There and How to Read the Discover Report

This guide is based on Google Search Central's page Discover and your website, the Discover content policies, Search Console Help on the Performance report for Discover and the robots meta tag reference. Quotes are Google's wording. AI answers in Search are a different surface, covered in our guide to AI Overviews and your website.

What Discover is

Google calls Discover "a part of Google Search that shows people content related to their interests, based on their Web and App Activity". Google says its Discover report includes traffic from Chrome and tracks Discover traffic "across all surfaces where users interact with Discover". The key difference from a normal search result: nobody typed a query. Google picks the content for the person.

That shapes everything else. You cannot target a keyword in Discover, and Google says its traffic is "less predictable or dependable" than keyword-driven visits. Its advice is to treat Discover traffic "as supplemental to your keyword-driven search traffic".

How a page becomes eligible

Google's rule is short: 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." Two things follow from it:

• Indexing comes first. A page Google has not indexed cannot appear. If you are unsure, check it with URL Inspection or the Page indexing report, both explained in our Google Search Console basics guide.
• Eligible is not the same as shown. Google says plainly that being eligible "is not a guarantee of appearing".

Discover is not only for news. Google says content can cover "a wide range of topics" that match a person's interests, and that older content may appear if it is helpful and relevant to them. It also says Discover uses "many of the same signals and systems used by Search" to judge helpful, people-first content, so the same work that helps your pages in Search applies here. Our guide on helpful content for business websites covers that side.

Some page types are a poor fit. Google says Discover looks for content "suitable for interest-based feeds, such as articles and videos", and gives examples of what it "might not recommend": job applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, or satirical content without any context. It also uses SafeSearch and filters out content that might be seen as shocking or unexpected.

What Google recommends

To make it more likely your content appears, Search Central lists these practices:

• Use page titles and headlines that "capture the essence of the content".
• Avoid clickbait: misleading or exaggerated details in the title, snippet or image, or holding back the information people need to understand what the content is about.
• Avoid sensationalism that plays on "morbid curiosity, titillation, or outrage".
• Provide content that is timely for current interests, tells a story well, or gives unique insights.
• Include compelling, high-quality images that are relevant to the content, especially large images (next section).
• Provide an overall great page experience.

The clickbait point is also a policy, not only advice: Discover does not allow preview content that "misleads users to engage with it by promising details which aren't reflected in the underlying content".

Images and large previews

Google says large images "are more likely to generate visits from Discover". Its recommended specifications:

Requirement	Google's guidance
Width	At least 1200 px wide
Resolution	More than 300,000 total pixels (a 1280x720 image has 921,600)
Aspect ratio	16x9
Permission for large previews	The max-image-preview:large robots setting, or AMP
Which image	Specify a large, relevant, representative image with schema.org markup or the og:image meta tag
Avoid	Generic images such as your site logo, and text-heavy images, in that markup or tag

The large preview setting is a single line in the page head: <meta name="robots" content="max-image-preview:large">. Google's robots meta tag reference says this allows a "larger image preview, up to the width of the viewport", and that it applies to all forms of search results, Discover included. Without it, Google "may show an image preview of the default size".

Google tries to crop images for Discover automatically. If you crop them yourself, keep them positioned for landscape use, and make sure the important details survive when a vertical image is cut down to 16x9. For file formats, sizes and compression, see our guide to website image optimization.

Content policies

To be eligible, content must not break Google Search's overall policies, its spam policies, or the policies for Search features, which cover dangerous, deceptive, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, violent and gory content, manipulated media, medical content, violent extremism, and vulgar language. On top of those, Discover has its own policies:

• Ads and sponsored content. Advertising and paid promotion "should not exceed your content". Sponsorship, including ownership or affiliate interest, payment or material support, "should be clearly disclosed to readers".
• Misleading content. No preview that promises what the page does not deliver.
• Transparency. Google says news sources should provide clear dates and bylines, information about the authors, publication and publisher, information about the company or network behind the content, and contact information.

When Google finds a violation it "may remove the content from Discover". After repeated or egregious violations, a whole site may no longer be eligible for Discover or for Discover surfaces such as "Articles for you" in Chrome. Violations can also show up as a manual action in Search Console; see our guide to Search Console manual actions for how to read one and request a review.

People can also follow a website. Content from a site someone follows appears in their "Following" feed unless it breaks Search's overall policies or the listed Search feature policies.

Why Discover traffic changes

Discover visits rise and fall more than search visits. Google gives three reasons:

• Changing interests. Feeds follow what a person is interested in, partly based on their search activity. When their interest in a topic fades, their feed moves on.
• Content types. Google keeps adjusting which kinds of content appear. It says Discover regularly shows content "including but not limited to sports, health, entertainment, and lifestyle".
• Search updates. Discover is an extension of Search, so updates to Search can change Discover traffic too.

Google adds that sites may see traffic changes "unrelated to the quality or publishing frequency of their content", and that after an update there may be nothing you need to do. A drop in Discover visits is therefore not proof that something on your site broke.

The Discover report in Search Console

Search Console has a separate Performance report for Discover. It only appears once your property has reached a minimum number of Discover impressions, so many smaller sites will not see it at all.

What it counts, in Google's terms:

• Impression: the item "was scrolled into view", as a standard item or in a carousel. Only one impression is counted per result per session.
• Click: the user clicked the item. Sharing it or any other action does not count as a click.
• Average CTR: clicks divided by impressions.

How to read it:

• The default range is the last 3 months; data goes back 16 months. You can group by page, country, Discover appearance and date, filter, and compare two groups.
• All metrics are credited to the canonical URL, not the page people land on. Duplicates show zero, and data appears only in the property that contains the canonical URL.
• Rows below an impression threshold are hidden, but still counted in the totals. The table stops at 1,000 rows, so chart totals can be higher than the table's sum.
• Dates are in Pacific Time, except the 24-hour view, which uses your local time. Recent data can be preliminary and is drawn with a dotted line.
• The Discover appearance grouping separates AMP articles, News Showcase, Web Story and Videos.

Because Discover traffic is more variable, look at weekly or monthly granularity before reading anything into a single day. For filters, comparisons and exports in Search Console in general, start with our Search Console basics.

Is it worth chasing for a business site?

This part is our view, not Google's guidance. For most service businesses, Discover is a bonus, not a channel to plan around. The work it rewards is the same work that helps search: indexed pages, honest titles, useful articles, a clear about and contact page, and good images. Two small steps are worth doing anyway on article and guide pages: allow large image previews with max-image-preview:large, and set a real, relevant 1200 px wide og:image per article instead of a logo. Then check the Discover report now and then, if your property has one, and judge it on monthly totals.

Frequently asked questions

How do I submit my site to Google Discover?

You can't, and you don't need to. Google says content is automatically eligible if it is indexed and meets Discover's content policies, with no special tags or structured data required. Eligibility does not guarantee it will be shown.

Why don't I see a Discover report in Search Console?

The report is visible only when your property has reached a minimum number of impressions in Discover. If you don't see it, your pages have not had enough Discover impressions yet.

What image size does Google recommend for Discover?

At least 1200 px wide, more than 300,000 total pixels, in a 16x9 aspect ratio, enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting or AMP. Specify the image with schema.org markup or og:image, and avoid logos and text-heavy images.

Why did my Discover traffic drop?

Google lists changing interests, changes in the content types Discover shows, and updates to Search. It says traffic can change for reasons unrelated to the quality or publishing frequency of your content, and that there may be nothing to fix.

Does Discover only show news?

No. Google says Discover shows a wide range of topics matched to a person's interests, and older content may appear if it is helpful and relevant. It is less likely to show forms, job applications, petitions, code repositories or satire without context.

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