Google Discover is now less closely tied to Google Search rankings, according to Andy Almeida from the Google Trust and Safety team, who spoke yesterday at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich.
One of his slides, showing how existing systems assist the Google Discover team in addressing abuse, stated:
“Minimal alignment to search ranking gives us the tools we need to combat emerging abuse.”
What this implies. This appears to acknowledge that Google Discover is no longer leaning on Google’s search ranking systems as heavily as it may have previously when it comes to fighting abuse on Discover.
I asked Andy Almeida at the event to clarify, and he explained that Google Discover is designed to highlight lesser-known, emerging, and smaller publishers in the Discover feed. So even if Google Search doesn’t rank these sites prominently, Google Discover might. It achieves this by depending less on traditional Google Search ranking signals and more on its own dedicated systems.
The spam challenge. As I noted, Google Discover is facing a significant AI-driven spam issue. New sites on expired domains, as well as fresh disposable domains, are exploiting gaps to push low-quality, spammy content into Google Discover. These tactics tend to be less effective in standard Google Search.
Back in 2019, Google said that core ranking systems do influence Google Discover, and that being impacted by a core update could affect a site’s Discover visibility. The current direction seems to move away from that tighter alignment.
Why this matters. As we previously reported, Google is actively trying to resolve the spam issues in Google Discover. Adjusting the balance between giving new or lesser-known sites a chance to succeed in Discover and blocking spam from appearing is complex. Google is working on this now and aims to arrive at a robust solution.
At the same time, this shift shows Google is exploring ways to better support smaller publishers, including those covering niche topics, within Google Discover. That’s potentially very positive for newer and independent publishers – provided Google can also effectively tackle the spam problem in Discover.