Why has Google Discover traffic dropped or changed? Three reasons and how to fix it
GOOGLE DISCOVER can drive millions of users to your website.
But if you do not optimise your content correctly, it can be a very volatile source of traffic.
Why has my Google Discover traffic dropped?
Google’s official guidelines state three main reasons why Google Discover can change over time.
1. Changing interests
Google Discover is a personalised content feed based on your interests.
It aims to show you articles or news that you care about without you having to search for it.
Discover uses your web and app activity to understand what it is you are interested in.
But these interests can change over time – which can result in a change in Discover traffic.
Google state: “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.”
For example, let’s pretend you run a gardening blog.
You would expect this blog to drive more Discover traffic during the summer when interest around gardening is at its peak.
2. Content types
Google have outlined the type of content that should surface on Discover.
These include:
– Sports
– Health
– Entertainment
– Lifestyle
Google have also outlined the type of content that will not work on Discover.
These include:
– Dangerous content
– Deceptive practices
– Harassing content
– Hateful content
– Manipulated media
– Medical content
– Sexually explicit content
– Violent extremeist content
– Violent and gory content
– Vulgar language and profanity extremist
However, the goalposts are regularly moved by Google to ensure the best possible experience for Discover users.
Google state: “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.”
3. Updates to Google Search
Google regularly make changes to their search algorithms and systems.
This can impact organic search traffic as well as Google Discover.
In 2023, Google made 10 major updates to their algorithms.
This included:
– February 2023 product reviews update
– March 2023 core update
– April 2023 reviews update
– August 2023 core update
– September 2023 HCU
– October 2023 spam update
– Ranking issue
– October 2023
– November 2023 core update
– November 2023 reviews update
There has already been four core/spam updates completed in 2024.
Most recently, Google rolled out the August 2024 core update on August 15th.
It took 19 days to roll out.
During the update, Google issued a number of manual actions around Discover policy violations.
This shows the importance of producing high-quality content that does not mislead the user.
You can keep up to date with all of Google’s latest updates on this live incident page.
These updates can impact how much traffic a website drives from Google Discover.
If your website has seen a drop off in traffic, reach out to us at TRAFCK.
We have established ourselves as the industry leaders at driving clicks at mass from Discover.
Contact us at hi@trafck.co.uk and we can talk you through the process.
While you’re here, take a look at some of our other articles to help you drive from traffic from Google Discover:
