Google Discover

How pages get surfaced

Discover pulls from Google’s existing index, so there is no submission step and no markup that guarantees a slot. Google matches a page to a person’s Web and App Activity, interests, and location, then decides placement per user. Because the trigger is interest and not a keyword, traffic tends to arrive in spikes and can fall away just as quickly.

What Google rewards is documented, and it is the same standard as Search: helpful, people-first content that is genuinely useful, timely or evergreen with a fresh angle, honest titles (no clickbait or exaggeration), and a great overall page experience. Google states that Discover “makes use of many of the same signals and systems used by Search,” so there is no Discover-only checklist to game. A large, high-quality lead image matters more here than in classic search. Google recommends images at least 1200 px wide and enabling max-image-preview:large in your robots meta tag (or using AMP) so the feed can render a full-bleed card instead of a small thumbnail.

Some content is filtered out on principle: job applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, and shocking or unexpected material.

Discover is a mobile-first surface, appearing in the Google app, Chrome’s feed on Android, and the mobile google.com homepage. You measure it in the Search Console performance report for Discover, which breaks out impressions, clicks, and CTR by page, country, and appearance type. That report only shows up once your property clears an undisclosed minimum of Discover impressions, so lower-traffic sites may not see it at all.