Google Discover: An Image Could Be Worth 1,000 Clicks

Google Discover has been visible on the homepage of Search since September 2018.  It’s also available in the Google App, on Android and when you swipe right on the home screen of some devices.

Reporting of Discover traffic only became available within the Google Search Console 6 months after launch. Making the traffic source still feel in its infancy.

I’m a consultant and get to work on some pretty exciting projects from time-to-time. Many of which have a component that involves strategizing around Google Discover.

For some clients I work with, the sheer volume of Discover vs. Web Search traffic is startling.

It’s not unheard of (dependent on the industry) to have 80% of traffic being Discover with only 20% being from Web Search.

We’ve also learned that there is a connection between Core Updates and Discover.

The algorithm which powers Search proving to have more similarities than what was once thought.

For this reason, Google has said not to rely on Discover as a traffic source.

Your content could be consistently getting added to the feed, then it could go away overnight…

The Bizarre World of Google Discover

I wanted to start by pointing out how truly bizarre the SEO world has become for some online businesses.

For one client that I work with, here’s what Discover looks like for a single article they published:

That’s a pretty common situation, too.

You’ll rarely see an article last longer than 3 days in Discover, resulting in a significant and temporary uptick in clicks and impressions.

So this particular article received 21.7K clicks and 130K impressions, with an average CTR of 16.7% (which is enormous, by the way) in just 3 days.

I find that the CTR for articles in Discover is exceptionally high for the first day, and then quickly drops off over the following days.

But surely that article must be receiving big numbers via Web Search as well?

Looking at the same article for Web Search visibility, I can see the following:

So in Discover, the article received 21.7K clicks (in 3 days) vs. 353 clicks in Web Search (full lifetime).

That’s 61 times more clicks via Discover compared to Web Search.

Read more: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-discover-case-study/355124/