Google’s John Mueller answered a question about office hours hangouts about why Google discovered that traffic might suddenly stop. His answers covered methods for diagnosing Google Discover’s unique page issues and content policy violations.
Google Discovery
Google Discover is the source of website traffic, which is different from search-related traffic from Google. For users, this is a highly personalized article feed that meets user interests.
If the user searches for baked content, then Google’s algorithm will begin to display relevant content through the Google Discover function.
For users interested in entertainment content, Google Discover will display content from entertainment websites.
The key to understanding Google Discover is to understand that the traffic sent by Discover depends on how well the content of the website matches the user’s interest in a topic.
Therefore, it is important to clearly communicate the content of the page from the title tag and title so that Google can understand the content of the page and match it with users who are interested in specific types of content.
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problem:
“We noticed a big problem with Google Discover on our website. In two days, traffic dropped by about 70%.
It has fallen to a certain level and has stabilized at that level for some time.
We want to know if we did something wrong, or update or something.
Can you clarify what happened because it fell so much. “
John Mueller explains Google discovery traffic
John Mueller first clarified that since he did not know the person’s website, he could not comment on the website specifically, so his answer would be more general.
Mueller comments on Google Discover traffic:
“The reports I got from many people said that Discover’s traffic is very…whether it’s on or off, because if our algorithm determines that we won’t display too much content on the site in Discover, then there is space between the two Very small at this moment.
Then basically all the traffic disappeared.
On the other hand, if we do show something on your website in Discover, then you will suddenly get a lot of traffic again. “
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John Mueller explains Google discovery traffic
The person who asked the question went on to say that the site had received stable Discover traffic for four consecutive months, and then suddenly almost collapsed within two days.
He wanted to know if there was a technical error that caused Google Discover to stop sending traffic.
Why Google Discover stopped sending traffic
Mueller explained the diagnosis of the technical problem, and then went on to discuss the content discovery strategy.
John Mueller replied:
“If this is a technical issue, you will also see this in web searches, and you will see crawling issues appear.
I don’t fully understand what happened in Discover, but usually I see people talking about quality issues on the one hand, maybe the quality of the website is not very good, and our individual policies have found out.
Therefore, especially for discovery, we have some policies that are different from web search and recommendation. I think it’s a bit different in terms of adult content, clickbait content, and so on.
We mentioned all of these in Discover’s help center page.
Sometimes I suspect… uh… As I imagined, many websites have a mixture of all these things. I suspect that sometimes our algorithm just finds a little too much and they say, oh, Just like we have now be careful with this website.
So… I don’t know your website or the details of what Discover is there to pick up. This is where I am going. “
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John Mueller next recommends that those who ask questions look for articles written by SEO about what works well in Discover to gain more insights.
Mueller continued his answer:
“From our perspective, Discover is where we try to show people the flow of information, so we often don’t have a lot of detailed information about what you need to provide there to really perform well.
So sometimes it makes sense to look at other people’s findings. “
Discover several reasons for traffic loss
John Mueller of Google put forward two possible reasons for Google Discover traffic loss.
- Website quality issues
- Google found content policy violation
Website quality issues
There may be many website quality problems, but similar to what Mueller suggested, if there is no change in general search rankings, the website quality problems may not be the cause.
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Google Discovery Content Policy
Publishers should be familiar with Discover Content Policy Violations to avoid negatively impacting Google Discover traffic, as many topics are prohibited.
In addition to violent, explicit or hateful content, there are other types of content violations that require attention.
- Ads cannot exceed content
- Affiliation must be clearly stated
- Promise one thing but don’t provide a misleading title on the content itself
- Transparency in relation to author attribution, publication, publisher, contact information and publication date
Other important content violations to be aware of are the prohibition of misleading clickbait titles, content designed to irritate and promote emotional buttons, and what Google describes “Pathological curiosity“Among other things.
take away
The main conclusion about Google Discover content is that it does not necessarily depend on the relative degree of ranking content in search.
Google Discover traffic is based on user interests. For example, if the user’s interest in your content is seasonal, such as travel, traffic may begin to dry up in the fall after the holiday.
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Citation
Google’s official discovery policy violation page
Google Discovery Document
Why Google Discover traffic is drying up
Watch the minute mark at 47:05
