How Discover is different from Search

How Discover is different from Search

With Search, users enter a search term to find helpful information related to their query, but Discover takes a different approach. Instead of showing results in response to a query, Discover surfaces content primarily based on what Google's automated systems believe to be a good match with a user's interests.

As a highly personalized feed, Discover actively tunes itself to a user’s interests and displays content that aligns with those interests. The content in Discover is automatically refreshed as new content is published, however Discover is designed to show all types of helpful content from across the web, not just newly published content.

We are always improving Discover to serve personalized, helpful content to users. Given the serendipitous nature of Discover, traffic from Discover is less predictable or dependable when compared to Search, and is considered supplemental to your Search traffic. Our ongoing work to improve Discover’s user experience means sites may see changes in their traffic unrelated to the quality or publishing frequency of their content.

How content appears in Discover

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. Please note that being eligible to appear in Discover is not a guarantee of appearing.

If your site violates one or more Discover content policies, Discover manual actions may appear in your Search Console under Security and Manual actions. Learn more about the types of violations and how to fix them.

As part of Google Search, Discover makes use of many of the same signals and systems used by Search to determine what is helpful, people-first content. Given this, those looking for success with Discover should review our advice on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.

To increase the likelihood of your content appearing in Discover, we recommend the following:

• Use page titles that capture the essence of the content, but in a non-clickbait fashion.
• 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.
• Avoid tactics to artificially inflate engagement by using misleading or exaggerated details in preview content (title, snippets, or images) to increase appeal, or by withholding crucial information required to understand what the content is about.
• Avoid tactics that manipulate appeal by catering to morbid curiosity, titillation, or outrage.
• Provide content that's timely for current interests, tells a story well, or provides unique insights.

To deliver a good user experience, Discover seeks to present content that's suitable for interest-based feeds, such as articles and videos, as well as filter out content that's not desired or that might confuse readers. For example, Discover might not recommend job applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, or satirical content without any context. Discover makes use of SafeSearch but beyond that filters out content that might be seen as shocking or unexpected.

The Follow feature and your website

The Follow feature lets people follow a website and get the latest updates from that website in the Following tab within Discover in Chrome. Currently, the Follow button is a feature that's available to signed-in users in English in the US, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, Canada, and Australia that are using Chrome Android. It's also available to signed in users in English in the US that are using Chrome iOS.