Google Discover is an amazing source of traffic for publishers because it can help their content to reach right audience without even those users searching something in Google Search. But the Discover has a problem – its the same problem which Google Search has – demoting small sites even if they are publishing good content.
Its not hidden from anyone that even good publishers were crushed by Helpful Content Update that Google rolled out in September 2023, even recently Google said that don’t expect to recover.
But Google is kicking out small to medium size publishers from both Search & Discover they are boosting visibility of big name publishers. Even in my personal Google Discover feed – all I see is just big publishers. Its super rare that I see any small/medium publisher content there, probably Google turned them all off from Discover with recent August Core Update.
Anyway now the feed is occupied by big publishers.
Many users are sharing this on X.
Seeing big changes. Collider is now overtaking Screen Rant as the most fequently promoted Valnet source in the Valscover results. pic.twitter.com/YbPm8rOKLX
— Josh Tyler (@joshtyler) November 12, 2024
I don’t know why Google is doing this or why Search Engineers are writing algorithms which seems to be just favouring big publishers.
So for small to medium size sites even if your fully aligned with both technical and content requirements to be shown in Google Discover STILL you might end up not getting visibility in Discover. Its just an issue with your content or site, its just bias of Discover algorithm to favour big publishers.
Right now Google is rolling out November Core Update, I’m hopeful that we might see some change and small/medium size publishers start to get some visibility in Discover but I can’t say anything for sure. Because Google is Goog Enough (aka messed up) nowadays and it seems that they are trying super hard to fix things, its just taking a lot of time.
Leave a Reply