Web Stories now have a dedicated space in Google Discover
A new home for Web Stories, the visual and immersive experience on which Google is pushing so much in recent times: in addition to appearing in Serps, in fact, this product now appears in a new and specific carousel featured on Google Discover, in a prominent and highlighted position that can win the attention and clicks of users.
Web Stories are coming on Google Discover
Giving the news is Vamsee Jasti, Web Stories Product Manager, which from the pages of the Google blog describes the operation of this feature, which will help users to find some of the best visual content of the Web directly at the top of Discover, “part of the Google app on Android and iOS and used by over 800 million people every month”.
The carousel of stories is initially only available in the United States, India and Brazil, but Google has already anticipated the intention to expand the functionality in multiple countries and products of its ecosystem.
Browsing through stories is simple: just tap on the preview of one of the stories on the shelf to enter “in an immersive full-screen experience“, and by tapping you can switch to the next page/screen or scroll to read a completely different story in the carousel.
Characteristics and advantages of Web Stories
These content can be made by anyone, single creator or publisher, and already “more than 2,000 sites have published stories that have been indexed by Google,” the article informs. In addition to Discover, stories emerge since 2019 (when they were still called AMP Stories) “in the results of Google Search globally on mobile devices” and will continue to do so with increasing frequency.
The great advantage of Web Stories for creators and publishers is that the product is “entirely under your direction, just like any other content on your website”, which is the big difference between Web Stories and social stories like Instagram and Snapchat. The authors of the stories have “full control over monetization, hosting, sharing and adding links to their stories”.
Publishers can also share stories with a URL, just like you do with any other web page, and allow you to view them outside of the Google app. Being in practice an extension of the site, “some of the first Web Stories users show their stories on their home page, social channels, newsletters and more”, thus drawing further traffic.
Creating Web Stories is easy
You can encode stories from scratch if you have the right technical skills, but to increase their adoption Google has released user-friendly tools that assist publishers: this is the case with the Web Stories plugin for WordPress, a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to create a story starting from default templates to which to add your own content, or other tools such as MakeStories and NewsroomAI, which in a few minutes allow you to complete a story to be added on the site.
In addition, Google has published a page dedicated to the content policy of Web Stories, which contains useful information that must be followed by all those who are interested in producing this content and all uses on Google products.
Google’s regulations for Web Stories
To appear both on Google Discover and in the Search as individual results, the stories must first comply with the Google Discover rules and the Instructions for Google webmasters. In order to emerge on richer experiences on Google (for example, grid display in Search, <