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.
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. 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.