Get on Discover | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google for Developers
Skip to main content
Google
Search Central
Documentation
SEO fundamentals
Introduction
Search Essentials
SEO Starter Guide
Optimizing for generative AI search
How Google Search Works
Do you need an SEO?
Crawling and indexing
Sitemaps
robots.txt
Meta tags
Crawler management
Removals
Canonicalization
Redirects
JavaScript SEO
Ranking and search appearance
Visual Elements gallery
Title links
Snippets
Images
Videos
Structured data
Favicons
Site-specific guides
Ecommerce
International and multilingual sites
Data analysis
Get started with Search Console
Debug traffic drops
Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO
Get started with Google Trends
Support
Blog
What's new
All updates
Documentation updates
Ranking updates
New YouTube videos
Recent podcast episodes
Events
Case studies
/
English
Deutsch
Español
Español – América Latina
Français
Indonesia
Italiano
Polski
Português – Brasil
Tiếng Việt
Türkçe
Русский
العربيّة
हिंदी
ภาษาไทย
中文 – 简体
中文 – 繁體
日本語
한국어
Sign in
Documentation
Search Console
Google
Search Central
Documentation
More
Support
Blog
What's new
More
Events
Case studies
Introduction
Search Essentials
Overview
Technical requirements
Spam policies
SEO fundamentals
SEO Starter Guide
How Google Search works
Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Generative AI fundamentals
Optimizing for generative AI
Guidance on using generative AI
Maintaining your site's SEO
Developer's guide to Search
Do you need an SEO?
Guidance on third-party SEO tools and advice
Crawling and indexing
Overview
File types Google can index
URL structure
Links
Sitemaps
Learn about sitemaps
Build and submit a sitemap
Manage sitemaps with sitemap index file
Sitemap extensions
Image sitemaps
News sitemaps
Video sitemaps and alternatives
Combining sitemap extensions
Crawler management
Ask Google to recrawl your URLs
Troubleshoot crawl errors
Google crawlers
List of Google crawlers
Googlebot
Reduce the Google crawl rate
Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers
robots.txt
Introduction to robots.txt
How Google interprets the robots.txt specification
Canonicalization
What is URL canonicalization
How to specify a canonical URL with rel="canonical" and other methods
Fix canonicalization issues
Mobile site and mobile-first indexing
AMP
About AMP on Google Search
Enhance AMP content
Validate AMP content
Remove AMP content
JavaScript
Understand the JavaScript SEO basics
Fix search-related JavaScript problems
Fix lazy-loaded content
Dynamic rendering as a workaround
Page and content metadata
Page metadata
Meta tags
Meta tags and HTML attributes that Google supports
Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag
noindex
rel attributes
Removals
Control what you share with Google
Page removals
Image removals
Redacted information
Site moves and changes
Redirects and Google Search
Site moves
Changing your hosting
Move a site with URL changes
A/B testing
Temporarily pause or disable a website
Ranking and search appearance
Overview
AI features
Byline dates
Favicons
Featured snippets
Flexible Sampling
Google Discover
Images
Local features
Business details
Top Places List
Opting out of local search results
Page experience
Understanding page experience
Core Web Vitals
Interstitials and dialogs
Preferred sources
Ranking systems
A guide to Google Search ranking systems
Reviews system
Ranking updates
List of ranking updates
Core updates
Spam updates
Site names
Sitelinks
Snippets
Structured data
Understand how structured data works
Structured data general guidelines
Enriched search results
Generate structured data with JavaScript
Feature guides
All structured data features
Article
Book actions
Breadcrumb
Carousel
Course list
Dataset
Discussion forum
Education Q&A
Employer aggregate rating
Fact check
Event
Image metadata
Job posting
Local business
Math solver
Movie carousel
Organization
Shopping
Overview
Product snippet
Merchant listing
Variants
Loyalty program
Merchant return policy
Merchant shipping policy
Profile page
Q&A
Recipe
Review snippet
Software app
Speakable
Subscription and paywalled content
Vacation rental
Video
Title links
Translated features
Translated results
Ad networks and translation-related Google Search features
Videos
Visual Elements gallery
Web Stories
Enable Web Stories on Google
Best practices for creating Web Stories
Web Story content policy
Early Adopters Program
Package tracking
Structured data carousels (beta)
Monitoring and debugging
Debug drops in Search traffic
Monitor with Search Console
Get started with Search Console
Improve SEO with a bubble chart
Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO
Debug with search operators
Overview
site: search operator
Google Images search operators
Preventing and monitoring abuse
Overview
Prevent user-generated spam
Malware and unwanted software
Prevent a malware infection
Social engineering (phishing and deceptive sites)
Google Safe Browsing Repeat Offenders Policy
Get started with Google Trends
Site-specific guides
Ecommerce
Overview
Where content can appear
Share product data
Include structured data
Launch a new website
Write high quality reviews
Design a URL structure
Ecommerce site structure
Pagination, incremental page loading, and Search
International and multilingual
Overview
Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites
Tell Google about localized versions of your page
How Google crawls locale-adaptive pages
Explicit content
Guidelines for sites with explicit content
What to do if your site is incorrectly flagged as explicit
SEO fundamentals
Introduction
Search Essentials
SEO Starter Guide
Optimizing for generative AI search
How Google Search Works
Do you need an SEO?
Crawling and indexing
Sitemaps
robots.txt
Meta tags
Crawler management
Removals
Canonicalization
Redirects
JavaScript SEO
Ranking and search appearance
Visual Elements gallery
Title links
Snippets
Images
Videos
Structured data
Favicons
Site-specific guides
Ecommerce
International and multilingual sites
Data analysis
Get started with Search Console
Debug traffic drops
Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO
Get started with Google Trends
All updates
Documentation updates
Ranking updates
New YouTube videos
Recent podcast episodes
Home
Search Central
Documentation
Send feedback
Discover and your website
Discover
is a part of Google Search that shows people content related to their interests, based on their
Web and App Activity.
This page explains more about how content may appear in Discover and best practices for site
owners to consider.
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. Note that being
eligible to appear in Discover is not a guarantee of appearing.
Content that may appear in Discover includes a wide range of topics that aligns with a
person's interests. Older content may appear if it's helpful and relevant to individuals based
on their interests.
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:
Avoid clickbait and similar 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.
Use page titles and headlines that capture the essence of the content.
Avoid sensationalism 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.
Include compelling, high-quality images in your content that are relevant, especially large images that
are more likely to generate visits from Discover. We recommend using images that meet the
following specifications:
At least 1200 px wide
High resolution of more than 300,000 total pixels (for example, a 16:9 image that's 1280x720
pixels would have 921,600 total pixels and satisfies this specification)
16x9 aspect ratio
Google tries to automatically crop the image for use in Discover. If you choose to
crop your images yourself, be sure your images are well-cropped and positioned for
landscape usage, and avoid automatically applying an aspect ratio. For example, if you
crop a vertical image into 16x9 aspect ratio, be sure the important details are included
in the cropped version that you specify in the og:image meta tag).
Enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting,
or by using AMP
Use either schema.org markup
or the og:image meta tag to specify a large image that's
relevant and representative of the web page, as this can influence which image is chosen as the
thumbnail in Discover. Learn more about how to specify your preferred image.
Avoid using generic images (for example, your site logo) in the schema.org markup or og:image meta tag.
For best results, avoid using text-heavy images in the schema.org markup or og:image meta tag.
Provide an overall great page experience. For more advice, check out our help page on
Understanding page experience in Google Search results.
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 wanted 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.
Why Discover traffic might change over time
Traffic from Discover is less predictable or dependable when compared to keyword-driven
search visits. Given its serendipitous nature, you should consider traffic from Discover as
supplemental to your keyword-driven search traffic. Here are some reasons why Discover traffic
may fluctuate:
Changing interests: Discover is designed and always improving to show content
aligned with what someone is interested in, which in part can be based on their search
activity. If someone is no longer as interested in a particular topic—perhaps reflected
by a decline in searching for it—their Discover feed might show other content they're
more interested in. In turn, this may cause changes in traffic for publishers.
Content types: Discover has and continues to adjust the types of content that might
appear on the feed to better align with what people are looking for. Discover regularly
shows content including but not limited to sports, health, entertainment, and lifestyle content
from across the open web.
Updates to Google Search: Periodically, we also make
updates to Search
designed to better provide people with links to helpful content. Because Discover is an
extension of Search, updates can sometimes produce traffic changes. If you notice changes to
your website's performance after an update, it may be useful to review our documentation on
Google Search's core updates and your website.
However, it may be that there's nothing you need to do after an update. Our
ongoing work to improve Discover's user experience means sites may see changes in their
traffic that are unrelated to the quality or publishing frequency of their content.
Monitor your performance on Discover
If you have content on Discover, you can monitor your performance using the
Performance
report for Discover. This report shows impressions, clicks, and CTR for any of your
content that has appeared on Discover in the last 16 months, as long as your data reaches
a minimum threshold of impressions. The Discover performance report
includes traffic from Chrome,
and fully tracks a site's Discover traffic across all surfaces where users
interact with Discover.
Send feedback
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2026-03-09 UTC.
Need to tell us more?
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2026-03-09 UTC."],[],["Discover shows content related to user interests, pulled from Google's indexed content.  Content is eligible if it is indexed and meets content policies.  To increase visibility, use compelling titles and high-quality, large images, avoiding clickbait and misleading information. The \"Follow\" feature, available in certain regions, allows users to receive updates via RSS/Atom feeds, which site owners can link in their website's `\u003chead\u003e`. Discover traffic can vary due to user interests, content type adjustments, and Google Search updates. Site performance on Discover can be tracked with a search performance report.\n"]]
LinkedIn
Join us on LinkedIn
YouTube
Watch our videos
Blog
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Podcast
Listen to Search Off the Record
X (Twitter)
Join us on X (Twitter)
Get support
Go to the help forum
Submit a question for office hours
Report spam, phishing, or malware
More support resources
Resources
Do you need an SEO?
SEO Starter Guide
Status of Search systems
Search Console documentation
Case Studies
Tools
Search Console
Rich Results Test
PageSpeed Insights
AMP Test
Android
Chrome
Firebase
Google Cloud Platform
Google AI
All products
Terms
Privacy
Manage cookies
English
Deutsch
Español
Español – América Latina
Français
Indonesia
Italiano
Polski
Português – Brasil
Tiếng Việt
Türkçe
Русский
العربيّة
हिंदी
ภาษาไทย
中文 – 简体
中文 – 繁體
日本語
한국어