Marfeel research on Google Discover
Google is increasingly prioritising AI summaries, X posts and Youtube videos on its Discover mobile aggregation platform.
The changes could be devastating for publishers who rely heavily on Discover for referral traffic. And it looks set to accelerate a global trend of declining traffic to publishers from both Google search and Discover .
Last year Press Gazette reported that two-thirds of Google traffic to leading UK and US publishers came via Discover – making it the single biggest source of referral traffic for many news organisations.
- Xavi Beumala from website analytics platform Marfeel warned in a research update
- “Google Discover is no longer a publisher-first surface. It’s becoming an AI platform with YouTube and X absorbing real estate that once went to newsrooms.”
According to Reach SEO and Discover director Nicola Agius writing on Linkedin, controversial social media platform X became the website domain attracting the most traffic on Google Discover in the UK in December.
Citing data from Newzdash she said visibility of X posts on Discover surged following Google’s December core algorithm update .
She noted that this followed an announcement from Google made at the conference Search Central Live in Zurich in November when it said: “We’re updating Discover to make it even easier to find, follow and engage with the content and creators users care about most.”
Google Discover recommends content to users on Android devices and in Google apps, based on their searches and activities in other apps.
Google says it prioritises “helpful, reliable, people-first content”. Unlike Google News, there is no requirement that Google Discover showcases bona fide publisher websites.
In recent months fake news stories published by fraudulent website publishers have been promoted on Google Discover, reaping tens of millions of clicks. Google said it was working on a “fix” for this issue.
Move towards Youtube clicks ‘not marginal experiment’
According to Marfeel, in the US, Brazil and Mexico 51% of the Google Discover feed comprises AI summaries which are constructed to promote videos on Google-owned Youtube.
Multiple publisher sources are cited in the AI summary. But the main call to action is to click to play a Youtube video.
According to Marfeel research in the US, in 77% of cases these AI summaries result in a click to Youtube rather than to the publishers whose work the content is based upon.
Marfeel also found that in the US AI summaries become more prominent the more users scroll on Google Discover – making up more than 80% of posts after position 20. X content is also said be appearing frequently on Google Discover.
Beumala said: “This looks like a controlled rollout that will likely expand. The US, Brazil and Mexico appear to be test markets for a broader, global redesign of Discover.
“This is not a marginal UI experiment. It is a reallocation of feed real estate away from links and toward inline Youtube plays and generated summaries.”
Beumala said that Youtube appears to be the main winner out of the changes being rolled out on Discover: “Discover is evolving from ‘traffic distributor’ to ‘engagement retention layer inside Google’s ecosystem”.
He said that X posts are flooding lower positions on Discover in the UK, Australia and Canada where they account for the vast majority of posts after position 20 in the feed.
Beumala said: “Google Discover is shifting from a traffic distributor to an attention controller. Publishers should treat it as a volatile dependency, not a reliable growth engine. Content may feed AI answers or Youtube journeys without monetisable outcomes for the newsroom.”
Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok content may also start flowing into the Discover feed in future. When Google announced the addition of posts from X, Instagram and Youtube Shorts in September, it said there would be “more platforms to come”.
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