Google Discover, more updates for the customized feed
At Mountain View work never stops and, with all the products and surfaces of the Google ecosystem, it could not be otherwise: the last front on which the interest of the developers of the company has focused is Google Discover, the feed that brings news directly to users’ mobile devices without the need to do research and that has received a series of interesting and useful updates to deepen for those who want to take advantage of this important organic traffic channel to the site.
How to appear in Google Discover, the update of guidelines
The most relevant news from this point of view is the update of the guidelines and official advice to appear in Google Discover, that can help publishers find out which aspects to improve to increase the chances of appearing in the feed and receive user clicks.
As we know, the feed is highly customized based on user search history, interests, as well as the topics and locations that follow, so the optimization tips for Discover are inevitably generic, but there is a specific aspect that appears in the new version of the Google document.
EAT also applies to Discover
The guide explicitly mentions the importance of the EAT paradigm to identify and recognize the contents that deserve to appear in the feed; to be precise, we read that “our automated systems display content on Discover from sites that have many individual pages that follow the EAT principles (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthyness)”.
More specifically, it clarifies that for the analysis of these three factors Google refers to the same principles followed and taken into account for Search: “Although Search and Discover are two different products, the general principles of competence, authority and reliability that apply to the content within them are similar,” and therefore should be equally similar interventions to improve the perception of Google.
Other suggestions to optimize Discover
Google has also updated many of the other parts of the document to provide publishers with guidance on the proper use of article titles, the importance of using large, high-quality images and providing timely and appealing content, confirming therefore the indications that already emerged from analysis “on the field” (as we wrote also in our guide to Google Discover).
Best practices to appear on Google’s feed
To have a better chance of entering the feed and intercepting new readers, publishers and site owners must pay attention to certain elements in particular, such as:
Having page titles that capture the essence of the content, but that are not just clickbait.
Avoid tactics to artificially increase involvement through misleading or exaggerated details in preview content (title, snippets, images) and hide crucial information to understand what the content is about.
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