An SEO professional was having problems with Google Discover, and found that their website traffic from Discover had dropped by 70 percent.
It dropped to a certain level and ended up being stable for some time.
They are wondering if they did something wrong – could it have been an update or something similar that could have caused their traffic to drop like that?
They found it to be such a drastic change that they are not sure exactly how or what could have affected their traffic in such a way.
John explained that he does get reports from people that Discover traffic is either on or off, in the sense that there is not all that much room in between.
There isn’t really a semi-on, or a semi-off manner for Google Discover traffic.
If Google does, however, end up showing something from Discover in the moment, then suddenly, you will end up having that rush of traffic yet again.
The SEO pro clarified that their traffic had been stable for at least 3 or 4 months. Then in 2 days, it would drop and remain at that level.
They suspect that it has something to do with a technical issue.
John replied that if it is in fact a technical issue, you will see those in web search also. You would also see crawl errors showing up somewhere else, such as in Google Search Console.
He doesn’t have the full insight into what happens on the Google Discover side..
However, there are some things he sees that have a correlation with Discover.
One of these things is that perhaps the quality of the site is not all that great.
There are also policies that are different from web search, especially for things like adult content, content that is click-baity in nature, and other types of content that could violate Discover policy.
He believes that many websites have a mix of these types of content. There’s also the possibility where their algorithms could find a bit too much, and therefore could be more aggressive in scaling back traffic as a result.
John suggested to look into people who have done more detailed studies on Discover, including the types of content that are acceptable, and others.
This happens at approximately the 47:03 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 6 47:03
Okay. I was wondering, we have noticed a big problem with Google Discover on our website. In, in two days, traffic dropped by some 70%. And it has been dropped to a certain level and has been stable on that level for some time. So we’re wondering if we did something wrong? Was it an update or something? Can you clarify as to what exactly happened since it’s such a drastic drop?
John 47:37
I don’t know specifically with regards to your website, but I anecdotally get reports from a lot of people that Discover traffic is very, either on or off, in the sense that there’s very little kind of room in between. And that if our algorithms determine we were not going to show much content from this website in Discover at the moment, and basically all of that, that traffic disappears. And in any other way, it’s the same thing, where if we do show something, from your website in Discover, then suddenly you have that big rush of traffic again.
SEO Professional 6 48:18
And what I wanted to clarify, it’s been stable for I don’t know, what, three, four months, and then in two days it drops and then stays at that level. So could it be a technical error or something like that?
John 48:32
If it’s a technical issue, then you would see that in web search as well. And you would see crawl issues showing up. And the so I don’t have full insight into exactly what all happens in Discover. But usually the issues that I see people talking about are on the one hand quality issues, where maybe the quality of your website is not so good.
And with regards to the individual policies that we have for Discover. So in particular, for Discover, we have some policies that are different from web search, and recommendations that are a bit different with regards to I think like adult content, clickbaity content, things like that. That’s all mentioned in the Help Center page that we have for Discover.
And sometimes I suspect, like, I imagine a lot of websites have a little bit of a mix of all of these kinds of things. And I suspect sometimes our algorithms just find a little bit too much. And then they say, oh, like we have to be careful now with this website. So like without knowing your website, and without knowing the details of what exactly Discover’s picking up there, that’s that’s kind of the direction I would head them.
And there are a number of SEOs externally that have looked into this Discover a little bit more and tried to figure out like what kind of content performs well or which content shows up at all in Discover. And they’ve written a bunch of blog posts and done presentations on that.
I will try to search for some of that and see what other people have found. Because from our point of view, Discover is something where we try to show a stream of information to people.
And because of that, we tend not to have a lot of detailed information on what exactly you need to provide there to perform really well. So sometimes it makes sense to look at what other people have figured out.
