During a Google Office Hours hangout, one SEO professional was concerned about Google Discover, which is a mobile-based implementation of personalized search results.
Their question was: is ranking in Google Discover at all like traditional organic web ranking?
Is any ranking involved at all?
John answered that there is likely a sense of ranking. But he also said that he does not think it’s the same as traditional organic ranking.
The reason for this is that Discover is so personalized. It’s not a normal ranking situation where you might open the page, and find that you’re position number five or whatever. Or perhaps next time you’re number four, and so on.
Internally, within the product, Google Discover has different algorithms that are trying to make sense of what is most important and most relevant to you.
However, nothing like that is exposed externally – outside of Google Discover.
The way John sees it, it’s a feed that just keeps going and going.
He also expounded that he imagines there are a number of different things that factor into ranking on Google Discover; things like geo targeting or different web page formats, should Discover show more video or less video, or more images and less images, that kind of thing.
However, he does not know 100 percent of everything that goes into Google Discover.
He also adds not to only follow recommendations on what to do. Instead, focus especially on things Google says not to do.
He suggested looking around on Twitter for people who are specialists in Google Discover, and consider some of their great ideas
However, he also reiterated that Google Discover is a personalized feed, it’s not something where you can work directly to improve your rankings there.
This happens at approximately the 18:29 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 6 18:29
This time I have a question, regarding Discover. In Discover, we have more or less two different, let’s say search results pages. So we have the first page and then you can click on more results. And then you have the second page. And my question is, is there any kind of ranking involved in this so that some article is on the second page? Or is it more a matter of the time when it is updated or something?
John 19:10
There is probably a sense of ranking. But I don’t think it’s the same as traditional web ranking. In that, like Discover is just so personalized. So it’s not, it’s not something where I think it would make sense to have kind of the traditional notion of oh, you open the discover page, and you’re number five, and maybe next time you’re number four, something like that.
So there is a sense internally within the product of trying to figure out what is most important for you or most relevant for you now when you’re browsing discover, but I don’t think any of that is exposed externally. So it’s, I don’t know, it’s basically a feed the way that I see it is like, it keeps going.
SEO Professional 6 20:04
So this would be a kind of personal ranking, which only involves my personal interests or other other aspects, like, let’s say the strength or popularity or anything else of a website, which, which would also in take effect on onto this ranking?
John 20:27
I don’t know. I mean, there are lots of things that go into even the personalized rankings side. And then I imagine there are also different aspects of maybe geo targeting and different formats of web pages, more video or less video, more images, less images. But I honestly don’t know what specifically.
SEO Professional 6 20:54
Okay, so the best way to cope with it would be to follow the recommendations there are for, for being listed in discover, which have been published by Google sometimes before Yeah.
John 21:11
Yeah, I would follow those recommendations. In particular, watch out for the aspects where we say don’t do this, or those kind of things. And I would also look around externally, on Twitter, there are a handful of people who are really almost like specialized on Discover, and they have some really cool ideas.
They’ve written some good blog posts on what they’ve seen. Things like the kind of content that works well in Discover, and the kind of content that doesn’t work well in Discover. I would definitely check those kinds of things out.
But because it’s such a personalized feed, from our point of view, it’s not that you can kind of like work to improve your ranking in there, because it’s not a keyword that people are searching for. It’s kind of like, well, here’s, here’s some stuff for you that we think might be interesting.
