An SEO professional asked John Mueller about Google Discover.
Their question was: for the last three to four months, they were working on Google Web Stories and it was going very well.
During the last month of this, around the 5th of March, they were having somewhere from 400 to 500 real time users coming from Google Discover on their web stories.
Suddenly, though, they saw an instant drop in their visitors from Google Discover. And their Search Console is not showing any errors.
They asked John what could be the reason for this?
John explained that he doesn’t believe there needs to be any specific reason for this. The problem with Discover is that they would consider it to be additional traffic to a website.
And this is something that can change very quickly. Anecdotally, John has seen that sometimes sites will get a lot of traffic from Google Discover, and then suddenly it goes away, then it comes back again.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing anything technically wrong. It may just be that in Discover, things have slightly changed.
Then suddenly, you get more traffic, or you get less traffic.
They do have a bunch of policies that apply to content that they show in Google Discover, though. John said that he would double check these just to make sure that they are not accidentally touching on any of those areas outlined within the policies.
This includes things like clickbaity content, for example. But even if everything is inline with the guidelines, it could still be that you get a lot of traffic from Discover, then suddenly you get a lot less traffic.
This happens at approximately the 03:07 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 2 3:07
Hey, John, I have a question in mind, we have a website. And from last three to four months, we have been working on Google Web Stories. It was going very well. The last month, 5th of March, actually, we were having somewhere of 400 to 500 real time users coming from Google Discover on our web stories. But suddenly, we saw an instant drop in our visitors from Google Discover. And our Search Console is not even showing any errors. What could be the possible reason for that?
John 3:52
I don’t think there needs to be any specific reason for that. Because especially with Discover, it’s something that we would consider to be additional traffic to a website. And it’s something that can change very quickly. And anecdotally, I’ve seen that from, or I’ve heard that from sites in these office hours that sometimes they get a lot of traffic from Discover, and then suddenly it goes away, and then it comes back again.
So it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing anything technically wrong, it might just be that in Discover, things have slightly changed. And then suddenly you get more traffic, or suddenly you get less traffic. We do have a bunch of policies that apply to content that we show in Google discover, and I would double check those.
Just to make sure that you’re not accidentally touching on any of those areas, that includes things, I don’t know offhand, but I think something around the lines of like clickbaity content for example. Those kinds of things. But I would double-check those guidelines to make sure that you’re all in line there. But even if everything is in line with the guidelines, it can be that suddenly you get a lot of traffic from Discover, and then suddenly, you get a lot less traffic.
SEO Professional 2 5:18
No, I didn’t mean that. Not suddenly, we got it. We’ve been having it constantly, for almost three to four months from when we started working on web stories, 400 to 500 of real time visitors we had. We didn’t change any part of our content or what we call, we didn’t try anything new over there. Everything was as we had done before. But we saw an instant drop. No, not even that. It worked less and less. Instantly. There were no visitors.
John 5:53
Yeah. That’s anecdotally that’s what I hear from people. That it goes from, you get a lot of traffic, and then suddenly it goes to almost nothing. Okay, I–sorry, I don’t have any better tips in that regard. I think Discover is something that is worthwhile trying out and seeing what you can do there. But it is something, because of its nature, it’s not tied to specific people searching, so it’s a lot harder to kind of work on it and have it in a persistent state.
