For Reach plc, Google Discover has offset search-driven traffic declines

As has been the case for many media companies this year, the U.K. publisher has seen its referral traffic from Google’s search engine slip over the past 12 months. 

Last month, Reach’s traffic from Google Search was down 25% year over year, “which is actually significant,” said Martin Little, audience director of distribution at Reach plc, on stage during the Digiday Publishing Summit Europe in Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 28.

Also significant is the fact that Reach’s referral traffic from Google’s other traffic driver — Google Discover — was not only up year over year but up enough to offset the search traffic decline. “It more than made up the difference,” said Little. At this point, 60% to 70% of the Google-driven traffic to Reach’s sites comes from Google Discover as opposed to Google Search, he said.

Other publishers have similarly seen Google Discover emerge as a meaningful traffic driver. But it can be a fickle one. However, Reach has been able to get a bit of a grasp on the content discovery platform. 

“We had a really lightbulb moment in November where we realized that headline types were really important for journalists to think about when they came to Discover versus search headline types,” Little said.

Whereas search headline types are typically oriented around keywords engineered to match a person’s search query, Google Discover headline types are keyed to what Little described as “the curiosity gap,” which he defined as “giving [the reader] the real nature of the story but without giving the critical need-to-know piece of information as part of that.” 

Case in point: The opening line above is meant to give the nature of this story (Google Discover is rivaling Google Search as a referral traffic driver) without dispensing the critical information (It’s not only rivaling but actually has overtaken Google Search for one publisher).

To aid its journalists in crafting headlines, Reach developed a flowchart. That flowchart first asks what platform is being aimed at, because multiple headlines will still need to be generated (one for a site’s home page, one for social, one for search, one for Discover, etc.). If search, then the journalist is advised to look at Google Trends data to come up with the keywords that would make for a search-friendly headline. But if Google Discover is the target, then the journalist is directed to draft a headline that highlights the most interesting aspect of the story.

“Obviously you want every story to think of the headline to be the most interesting thing. Unfortunately, Google Search doesn’t always reward that. Discover does,” Little said.

That’s especially true for what he described as “soft lens” stories, i.e. lifestyle article. Not only does that kind of content do particularly well on Discover — whereas news stories are more suited to search — but lifestyle content is more susceptible to Google’s AI Overviews cutting into their search traffic.

Reach has been working with a search engine optimization expert to monitor its sites’ search-driven traffic. As Google has been rolling out AI Overviews beyond the U.S. to the U.K. and elsewhere, the publisher has seen a correlation in search referral traffic declines for celebrity and entertainment content, said Little. 

“There’s a whole load of things playing into that search deterioration. AI Overviews has been a bit — everyone goes ‘it’s not really effective;’ I think it is,” said Little. But at least, so too is Google Discover in offsetting that deterioration — for now.