Google Discover is, by definition, a different product than Google Search, and as a result, it behaves in many different ways and requires different strategies than SEO. Content that drives significant SEO traffic may or may not do well in Discover and vice versa. In fact, it’s pretty common for articles to only appear in one product and not the other.

This is by design: Discover is meant to tap into the user’s unique interests, and the content that performs there might be more specific, esoteric, or focused on one particular niche compared to what might rank in the top results in Google Search.

The subject matter, search demand, images, headlines, and timely nature of the content can all impact whether an article drives traffic from SEO, Discover, or both.

The first step in evaluating the role of Discover in your marketing strategy is to understand whether and to what extent Discover’s visibility and traffic are valuable for your site. For sites focused on driving traffic — particularly sites that make money off display ads and/or affiliate links — Discover can be a highly valuable source of traffic.

However, for other types of sites, it can be a bit of a mystery whether Discover traffic is valuable at all, especially given that there is no dedicated source or medium for Discover traffic in Google Analytics. This makes it hard to say whether Discover was responsible for a conversion or any other engagement-based KPIs outside of landing a user on your site (which you can gather from Google Search Console).

Google Discover occasionally shows high-converting pages, such as e-commerce product pages, for users who may be in-market for those products based on their specific interests or search history. In rare cases, sites might even see Discover traffic going to seemingly random pages on their sites, such as an “About Us” page or a contact page. This may happen if Google thinks the Google Discover user would find those pages particularly relevant or helpful.

However, as a general rule of thumb, Discover most often shows timely, trending content from publishers and news websites.

When venturing into the world of driving traffic in Google Discover, it is necessary to start with a few important disclaimers:

• Google Discover is, by nature, extremely volatile and unpredictable

• It is not uncommon for sites to see thousands or millions of clicks in one day and then 0 clicks the next day or week

• Sites seeing consistent traffic from Discover can lose all of that traffic overnight, and the reasons are not always easily explainable (or explainable at all)

Google recently added some new language in its Get on Discover guidelines to explain to site owners some significant reasons for traffic volatility in Discover, including testing new content types, changing user interests, and impacts from Google algorithm updates.

While many site owners agree to understand the above concepts, more often than not, publishers are often shocked and devastated when Discover traffic comes crashing down, as it inevitably does for most sites at any given time.

This is why understanding and accepting this traffic volatility is necessary before relying on Discover traffic. In the words of the great News SEO, John Shehata, “Think of Discover traffic as bonus traffic.”

1. Ensure technical eligibility for Discover

The first and most important step for appearing in Google Discover is to ensure your website and your content are eligible. There is no formal way to submit a site to Google Discover; any content that is eligible to be indexed on Google Search is also eligible for Discover, as long as the following conditions are met:

a. Image requirements

Google recommends the following advice for images in Google Discover: “Include compelling, high-quality images in your content, especially large images that are more likely to generate visits from Discover. Large images need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting or by using AMP. Avoid using a site logo as your image.”

For every page you want to appear in Discover, it is important to check for the 1200px minimum width requirement. Only one featured image on the article must meet this minimum requirement — it does not have to apply to all images on the page.

The max-image-preview:large setting is a meta tag that should be inserted into the of every page you wish to include in Google Discover. If you use the WordPress plugin, Yoast, this tag will be inserted into your templates automatically.

Custom images, like infographics or pictures with words or objects superimposed, can also drive strong performance.

Blurry or out-of-focus images can lead to poor CTRs, along with unengaging images that don’t resonate with users.

It is best to analyze your site’s own top-performing images in Discover to develop a strategy for which types of images work best for your particular site (or not). Take inventory of your top and lowest-performing articles plus their featured images to see if you can spot any patterns about which images work best to drive high CTRs.

6. Titles vs. headlines vs. OG titles

The headline displayed in the Google Discover article thumbnail, in combination with the featured image, are the two main ingredients for driving strong click-through rates in Discover. The headline is arguably the most crucial element.

Therefore, it’s crucial to understand how to write good headlines for driving performance in Discover specifically. Luckily, Google (usually) appears to use different page elements to display headlines in Google Discover than it does for SEO. It’s also important to remember that these fields impact more than Discover performance, so don’t choose headlines only meant for Google Discover engagement without thinking about how these headlines can affect other areas, like SEO performance, user experience, or brand perception.

Generally speaking, Google will choose either the

(article headline) or the Open Graph (OG) title for the article thumbnail in Google Discover. However, it may also choose the