Google Discover is one of the reasons news outlets like this one still exist. When Google determines stories from us (and all of the other news publishers you read regularly) meet a certain set of standards, it sends it to Discover and we get traffic that helps keep the lights on. Since the rest of Google Search is filled with SEO spam lists of “top” products and gamed by destroyers of the web, Discover really is essential to the news industry.
Today, Google announced some potentially beneficial changes to Discover that you might love and that can also help us out. For one, Google is going to show more social media posts and videos from sources like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. They plan to expand the sources at some point, but we’re starting there. Google said that “research” told them people enjoy seeing a mixture of social-like posts as well as news articles in Discover.
More importantly, Google is making it super easy for you to follow publishers (and creators) to get their content to show more regularly in your Discover. You’ll see “Follow” links next to sources in Discover that you don’t yet follow, but you can also just manually add trusted sources to your list to see their content.
For example, this link will let you easily add Droid Life – that way you shouldn’t miss our top stories.
You OK with social media stuff in your Discover or would you rather it just be news?
