{"id":1761,"date":"2026-01-19T22:48:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T14:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=1761"},"modified":"2026-01-19T22:48:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T14:48:28","slug":"how-to-analyze-google-discover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=1761","title":{"rendered":"How To Analyze Google Discover"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

TL;DR<\/strong><\/p>

  1. To generate the most value from Discover, view it through an entity-focused lens. People, places, organisations, teams, et al.<\/li>
  2. Your best chance of success in Discover with an individual article is to make sure it outperforms its expected performance early. So share, share, share.<\/li>
  3. Then analyze the type of content you create. What makes it clickable? What resonates? What headline and image combination works?<\/li>
  4. High CTR is key for success, but \u201ccuriosity gap\u201d headlines that fail to deliver kill long-term credibility. User satisfaction trumps clickiness over time.<\/li> <\/ol>

    Discover isn\u2019t a completely black box. We have\u00a0a decent idea of how it works\u00a0and can reverse engineer more value with some smart analysis.<\/p>

    Yes, there\u2019s always going to be some surprises. It\u2019s a bit mental at times. But we can make the most of the platform\u00a0without\u00a0<\/em>destroying our credibility by publishing articles about vitamin B12 titled:<\/p>

    \u201cOutlive your children with this one secret trick the government don\u2019t want you to know about.\u201d<\/p> <\/blockquote>

    Key Tenets Of Discover<\/h2>

    Before diving in headfirst, let\u2019s check the depth of the pool.<\/p>

    \u201cSustained presence on search helps maintain your status as a trustworthy publisher.\u201d<\/p> <\/blockquote>

    • Discover feeds off fresh content. While evergreen content pops up, it is very closely related to the news.<\/li>
    • More lifestyle-y, engaging content tends to thrive on the clickless platform.<\/li>
    • Just like news, Discover is very entity, click, and early engagement driven.<\/li>
    • The personalized platform groups cohorts of people together. If you satiate one, more of that cohort will likely follow.<\/li>
    • If your content outperforms its predicted early-stage performance, it is more likely to be boosted.<\/li>
    • Once the groups of potentially interested doomscrollers have been saturated, content performance naturally drops off.<\/li>
    • Google is empowering our ability to find individual creators and video content on the platform, because people trust people and like watching stuff. Stunned.<\/li> <\/ul>

      Obviously, loads of people know how to game the system and have become pretty rich by doing so. If you want to laugh and cry in equal measure, see the state of Google\u2019s spam problems here.<\/p>

      \"How
      No sign of it being fixed either (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

      Most algorithms follow\u00a0the Golden Hour Rule. Not to be confused with the golden shower rule, it means the first 60 minutes after posting determine whether algorithms will amplify or bury your content.<\/p>

      If you want to go viral, your best bet is to drive early stage engagement.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

      What Data Points Should You Analyze?<\/h2>

      This is focused more on how you, as an SEO or analyst, can get more value out of the platform. So, let\u2019s take conversions and click\/impression data as read. We\u2019re going deeper. This isn\u2019t amateur hour.<\/p>

      I think you need to track the below and I\u2019ll explain why.<\/p>

      • CTR.<\/li>
      • Entities.<\/li>
      • Subfolders.<\/li>
      • Authorship.<\/li>
      • Headlines and images.<\/li>
      • Content type (just a simple breakdown of news, how-tos, interviews, evergreen guides, etc.).<\/li>
      • Publishing performance.<\/li> <\/ul>

        You need to already get traffic from Discover to generate value from this analysis. If you don\u2019t, revert back to creating high-quality, unique content in your niche(s) and push it out to the wider world.<\/p>

        Create great content\u00a0and get the right people sharing it.<\/p>

        Worth noting you can\u2019t accurately identify Discover traffic in analytics platforms. You have to accept some of it will be mis-attributed. Most companies make an educated guess of sorts, using a combination of Google and mobile\/android to group it together.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

        CTR<\/h3>

        CTR is one of the foundational metrics of\u00a0news SEO,\u00a0Top Stories, Discover, and almost any form of real-time SEO. It is far more prevalent in news than traditional SEO because the algorithm is making decisions about what content should be promoted in almost real time.<\/p>

        Evergreen results\u00a0are altered continuously, based on much longer-term engagement.<\/p>

        This is weighted alongside some kind of traditional\u00a0Navboost engagement data \u2013 clicks, on-page interactions, session duration, et al. \u2013 to associate a clickable headline and image with content that serves the user effectively.<\/p>

        It\u2019s also one of the reasons why clickbait has (broadly) started to die a death. Like rampant AI slop, even the mouth breathers will tire of it eventually.<\/p>

        To get the most out of CTR, you need to combine it with:<\/p>

        • Image type.<\/li>
        • Headline type (content type too).<\/li>
        • And entity analysis.<\/li> <\/ul>

          Entity Analysis<\/h3>

          Entities are more important in news than any other part of SEO. While entity SEO\u00a0has been growing in popularity for years, news sites have been obsessed with entities (arguably without knowing it), for years.<\/p>

          \"How
          Individual entity analysis based on the title and page content is perfect for Discover (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

          While it isn\u2019t as easy to just frontload headlines with relevant entities to get traffic anymore, there\u2019s still a real value in analyzing performance at an entity level.<\/p>

          Particularly in Discover.<\/p>

          You want to know what people, places, and organizations (arguably, these three make up 85%+ of all entities you need to care about) drive value for you and users in Discover.<\/p>

          To run proper entity analysis you cannot do this manually. At least not well or at scale.<\/p>

          My advice is to use a combination of your LLM of choice, an\u00a0NER (Named Entity Recognition)\u00a0tool and either\u00a0Google\u2019s Knowledge Graph\u00a0or\u00a0WikiData.<\/p>

          You can then extract the entity from the page in question (the title), disambiguate using the on page content (this helps you assess whether \u2018apple\u2019 is the computing company, the fruit or an idiotic celebrities daughter) and confirm it with WikiData or Google\u2019s Knowledge Graph.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

          \"How
          Bubble charts are a fantastic way of quickly visualizing opportunities for content, not just for Discover (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

          Subfolder<\/h3>

          Relatively straightforward, but you want to know which subfolders tend to generate more impressions and clicks on average in Discover. This is particularly valuable if you work on larger sites with a lot of subfolders and high content production.<\/p>

          \"How
          I like to break down entity performance at a subfolder level like so (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

          You want to make sure that everything you do maximizes value.<\/p>

          This becomes far more valuable when you combine this data with the type of headline and entities. If you begin to understand the type of headline (and content) that works for specific subfolders, you can help commissioners and writers make smarter decisions.<\/p>

          Subfolders that tend to perform better in Discover give individual articles a better chance of success.<\/p>

          Generate a list of all of your subfolders (or topics if your site isn\u2019t setup particularly effectively) and tracking clicks, impressions and CTR over time. I\u2019d use total clicks, impressions and CTR and an average per article as a starting point.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

          Authorship<\/h3>

          Google tracks authorship in search. No ifs, no buts. The person who writes the content has significance when it comes to\u00a0E-E-A-T,\u00a0and good, reliable authorship makes a difference.<\/p>

          How much significance, I don\u2019t know. And neither do you.<\/p>

          In breaking down all metrics from the leak that mention the word \u201cauthor,\u201d the below is how Google perceives and values authorship. As always, this is an imperfect science, but it\u2019s interesting to note that of the 35 categories I reviewed, almost half are related just to identifying the author.<\/p>

          \"How
          Not just who authored the article, but how clear is their online footprint (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

          Disambiguation\u00a0is one of the most important components of modern-day search. Semantic SEO. Knowledge graphs. Structured data. E-E-A-T. A huge amount of this is designed to counter false documents, AI slop, and misinformation.<\/p>

          So, it\u2019s really important for search (and Discover) that you provide undeniable clarity.<\/p>

          For Discover specifically, you should see authors through the prism of:<\/p>

          • How many articles have they written that make it onto Discover (and that perform in Search)?<\/li>
          • What topic\/entities do they perform best with?<\/li>
          • Ditto headline type.<\/li> <\/ul>

            Headline Type<\/h3>

            This is a really good way of viewing the type of content that tends to perform for you. For example, you want to know whether curiosity gap<\/strong>\u00a0headlines work well for you and whether headlines with\u00a0numbers<\/strong> have a higher or lower CTR on average.<\/p>

            • Do headlines with celebrities in the headline work well for you?<\/li>
            • Does this differ by subfolder?<\/li>
            • Do first-person headlines have a higher CTR in Money than in News?<\/li> <\/ul>

              These are all questions and hypotheses that you should be asking. Although you can\u2019t scrape Discover directly (trust me, I\u2019ve tried), you can hypothesize which H1, page title, and OG title is the clickiest.<\/p>

              \"How
              The top headline is a list that piques my curiosity (although I\u2019d add in a number here), and the bottom is more of a straight \u201chow-to.\u201d (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

              What\u2019s interesting in this example is that \u201chow-to\u201d headlines are not portrayed as very Discover-friendly. But it\u2019s the concept that sells it. It\u2019s different.<\/p>

              Start by defining all the types of headlines you use \u2013 curiosity gap, localized, numbered lists, questions, how-to or utility type, emotional trigger, first person, et al. \u2013 and analyze how effective each one is.<\/p>

              Use a machine learning model (you can absolutely use ChatGPT\u2019s API) to categorize each headline.<\/p>

              • Train the model to identify place names, numbers, questions, and first-person style patterns.<\/li>
              • Verify the quality of the categorization.<\/li>
              • Break this down by subfolder, author, entity, or anything else you choose.<\/li> <\/ul>

                Worth noting that there are five different headlines you and Google can and should be using to determine how content is perceived. Discover is known to use the OG title more frequently than traditional search.<\/p>

                It\u2019s an opportunity to create a \u201cclickier\u201d headline than you would typically use in the H1 or page title.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

                Images<\/h3>

                Images fall into a similar category as headlines. They\u2019re crucial. You can\u2019t definitively prove which image gets pulled through into Discover. But as long as\u00a0your featured image is 1200 px\u00a0wide, it\u2019s safe-ish to assume this is the one that\u2019s used.<\/p>

                CTR is arguably the single biggest factor in determining early success. Continued success, I believe, is more Navboost-related \u2013 more traditional-ish engagement.<\/p>

                And CTR in Discover is determined by two things:<\/p>

                1. The headline.<\/li>
                2. The image.<\/li> <\/ol>

                  Well, two things in your control. You could be pedantic and say, \u201cOoo, your brand is an important factor in CTR, actually. Psychologically, people always click on\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>

                  And I\u2019d tell you to bore off. We\u2019re talking about an individual article. We\u2019ve done a significant amount of image testing and know that in straight news, people like seeing people looking sad. They like real-ness.<\/p>

                  In money, they like people looking at the camera, looking happy. It makes them feel safe in a financial decision.<\/p>

                  \"How
                  People looking evocatively miserable, looking directly at the camera. Probably clickable, but you need to test (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

                  Stupid, I know. But we\u2019re not an intelligent race. Sure, there are a few outliers. Galileo. Einstein. Noel Edmonds. But the rest of us are just trying not to throw stuff at each other outside Yates\u2019s on a Friday night.<\/p>

                  It is actually why clickbait headlines have worked for years. It works until it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>

                  You\u2019ll need to upload a set of images to help train the model, and please don\u2019t take it as gospel. Check the outputs. For the basics \u2013 whether people are present, where they\u2019re looking, color schemes, etc. \u2013 great. For more nuanced decisions like trustworthiness or emotional meaning, you\u2019ll need to do that yourself.<\/p>

                  Worth noting that lots of publishers trial badges and logos on images. And for good reason. Images with logos consistently click higher for larger brands (to the best of my knowledge), and if you\u2019re a paywalled site, but have set live blogs to free, it\u2019s worth telling people.<\/p>

                  You should breakdown this image analysis into:<\/p>

                  • Human presence and gaze.<\/li>
                  • Facial expression.<\/li>
                  • Emotional resonance.<\/li>
                  • Composition and framing.<\/li>
                  • Colour schemes.<\/li>
                  • Photo-type.<\/li> <\/ul>

                    Then you can use machine learning to bucket photos into groups to help determine CTR. For example, people directly looking at a camera + smiling could be one bucket. Not looking at a camera + scowling.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

                    Publishing Performance<\/h3>

                    The more you publish, the more this matters.<\/p>

                    Large newsrooms run analysis on publishing volumes, times, and content freshness fairly consistently and at a desk-level. If you only have 50 or fewer articles per month making it into Discover, you probably don\u2019t need to do this.<\/p>

                    But if we\u2019re talking about hundreds or thousands of articles, these insights can be really useful to commissioners.<\/p>

                    I would focus on:<\/p>

                    • Publishing days.<\/li>
                    • Publishing times.<\/li>
                    • Content freshness.<\/li>
                    • Republishing vs. publishing.<\/li> <\/ul>
                      \"How
                      Breaking things down at a subfolder level is always crucial (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
                      \"How
                      Day of the week data is always useful for larger publishers to get the most value out of their publishing (Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
                      \"How
                      Image Credit: Harry Clarkson-Bennett<\/figcaption><\/figure>

                      Your output should give really clear guidance to desks, commissioners, and publishers around when is best to publish for peak Discover performance.<\/p>

                      We never make direct recommendations solely for Discover for a number of reasons. Discover is a highly volatile platform and one that does reward nonsense. It can lead you down the garden path with all sorts of thin, curiousity gap style content if you just follow the numbers.<\/p>

                      And it has limited\u00a0direct<\/em>\u00a0impact on your bottom line.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

                      How Do You Tie This All Together?<\/h2>

                      You need a clear set of goals. Goals that help you deliver analysis that directly impacts the value of your content in Discover. When you set your analysis, focus on elements you have more control over.<\/p>

                      For example, you might not be able to control what commissioners choose to publish, but you can change the headline (H1, title, and\/or OG) and image prior to publish.<\/p>

                      1. Set a clear goal around conversions and traffic.<\/li>
                      2. Understand what you have more control over.<\/li>
                      3. Deliver insights at a desk or subfolder level.<\/li> <\/ol>

                        Understanding whether your role is more\u00a0strategic\u00a0<\/strong>or\u00a0tactical\u00a0<\/strong>is crucial. Strategic roles are more advisory in nature. You can offer some thoughts and advice on the type of headlines and entities to avoid or choose, but you may not be able to change them.<\/p>

                        Tactical roles mean you have more say in the implementation of change. Headlines, publish times, entity targeting, etc.<\/p>

                        Simple.<\/p>

                        More Resources:<\/strong><\/p>

                        This post was originally published on Leadership in SEO.<\/em><\/p>

                        Featured Image: Master1305\/Shutterstock<\/em><\/p> <\/div>

                        SEO#Analyze #Google #Discover1768834108<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                        TL;DR To generate the most value from Discover, view it through an entity-focused lens. People, places, organisations, teams, et al. Your best chance of success in Discover with an individual article is to make sure it outperforms its expected performance early. So share, share, share. Then analyze the type of content you create. What makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[4030,4031,75],"class_list":["post-1761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accessibility","tag-analyze","tag-discover","tag-google"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}