You’ve seen the charts. One day your traffic is a beautiful, upward-sloping line, and the next, it looks like a heart monitor after a flatline. Most people blame "the algorithm" like it’s some sentient god punishing them for a typo. It isn't. Google is actually pretty transparent about what it wants, even if the execution feels like a moving target. If you want to know what it is that ranks on Google and appears in Google Discover, you have to stop thinking about keywords and start thinking about trust.
Google doesn't care about your word count. It doesn't care if you used your keyword exactly 2.5% of the time. Honestly, it’s looking for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—the E-E-A-T framework.
Search and Discover are two different beasts. Search is proactive; someone asks a question, and Google finds the best answer. Discover is passive. It’s a feed based on what Google thinks you like. But the common thread? Reliability. If your content feels like it was spat out by a machine that’s never tasted an apple or felt a heartbreak, Google’s systems—specifically the Helpful Content System—will likely bury it.
The Real Difference Between Search Intent and Discover Interest
Let's get one thing straight. Google Search is about utility. If I search for "how to fix a leaky faucet," I want a step-by-step guide with clear photos. I don't want a 500-word intro about the history of indoor plumbing in Rome.
Discover is more about "the vibe." It’s highly visual and relies heavily on high-quality imagery. According to Google’s own documentation, the "Discover" feed is fueled by your Web & App Activity. It’s personal. To get there, you need a hook. Not a clickbait hook—Google is getting scarily good at detecting "curiosity gaps" that lead to nowhere—but a genuine, interesting angle.
Think about the last time you scrolled through your Google app. You probably saw a mix of news, hobby-related articles, and maybe a "long-read" from a site you visited three days ago. That’s because Discover prioritizes freshness and specific user interests over general "search volume." If you’re writing for Search, you’re solving a problem. If you’re writing for Discover, you’re feeding a passion.
Why Google’s Helpful Content System Changed Everything
Back in late 2022 and throughout 2023, Google dropped a series of updates that basically nuked "SEO-first" websites. You know the ones. Sites that exist only to rank for high-volume keywords so they can shove affiliate links in your face.
Google’s Lily Ray has spoken extensively about this. She often points out that sites losing traffic in these updates usually lack "real-world" signals. Do you have a physical address? Do you have an "About" page that shows real people with real credentials? If you’re writing medical advice, are you a doctor? Or are you just someone who read three other blogs and "synthesized" the info?
The Helpful Content System (HCS) is now integrated into the core algorithm. It’s a site-wide signal. This means if 70% of your site is fluff designed to rank, your 30% that is actually good will still suffer. You can't just hide the junk anymore. It’s all or nothing.
Decoding the E-E-A-T Secret Sauce
People get obsessed with the "E"s. Let's break them down without the corporate speak.
Experience is the newest addition. It asks: "Has this person actually done the thing?" If you’re reviewing a camera, Google looks for "first-hand" evidence. This could be original photos, specific anecdotes about how the buttons feel in the rain, or a video of you using it. It’s the difference between saying "The Sony A7IV is good" and saying "When I was shooting at the pier last Tuesday, the autofocus on the A7IV struggled with the glare off the water."
Expertise is about your background. If you're writing about tax law, you should probably be a CPA or a tax attorney. Google uses something called the Knowledge Graph to connect authors to their credentials across the web.
Authoritativeness is your reputation. Do other experts in your field link to you? Does Wikipedia mention you? Is your site the "go-to" source for a specific niche? This takes years to build. You can't hack it with a bunch of $5 backlinks from a shady forum.
Trust is the big one. It’s the center of the E-E-A-T wheel. If the other three are missing, Trust evaporates.
The "Hidden" Role of User Signals
We can argue all day about whether Google uses "click-through rate" (CTR) or "dwell time" as a ranking factor. Officially, they say they don't use them directly for ranking. But the leaked Google API documentation from 2024 suggests that "Navigational Intent" and user interactions do matter.
Basically, if everyone clicks your result and then immediately hits the "back" button because your site is a mess of pop-up ads, Google notices. They call this "pogo-sticking." It tells the algorithm that your page didn't satisfy the user's intent.
To rank, you need to satisfy the "Information Gain" criteria. This is a patent Google filed that basically says: "Does this page provide something new that the other pages don't have?" If you’re just repeating what’s already on page one, why should Google rank you? They want unique perspectives. They want the stuff nobody else is talking about.
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Technical SEO: The Boring Stuff That Still Matters
You can't ignore the plumbing. If your site takes eight seconds to load on a mobile phone, you’re dead in the water. Google uses "Core Web Vitals" to measure user experience. These include:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): How fast does the main content load?
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): How responsive is the site when you click something?
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Does the page jump around while it's loading? (This is the most annoying thing on the internet, and Google hates it as much as you do).
Also, your site must be mobile-friendly. Google uses "mobile-first indexing," meaning it looks at the mobile version of your site to decide how to rank you, even for desktop searches. If your mobile site is a stripped-down, broken version of your desktop site, you’re losing.
Getting Into Google Discover: The Visual Game
If Search is a library, Discover is a magazine rack. To get on that rack, you need a killer cover.
Large, high-quality images are non-negotiable for Discover. Google recommends images at least 1200 pixels wide. They should be compelling and relevant. Avoid using your logo as the primary image; it’s boring and doesn't tell a story.
Discover also loves "trending" topics. But it’s not just news. It’s "evergreen" content that is currently trending in a specific niche. For example, if there's a sudden surge in interest in "knitting with chunky wool," your three-year-old article on that topic might suddenly spike in Discover traffic.
The best way to stay in Discover is to build a brand. If users constantly search for your site by name, Google sees that as a massive signal of "Trust." They’ll start pushing your content to those users’ feeds more frequently.
Actionable Steps to Improve Your Rankings
Stop writing for bots. Seriously. The bots are now trained to recognize when you're writing for them, and they don't like it.
Start by auditing your existing content. Look at your Google Search Console data. Which pages have high impressions but low clicks? Your titles probably suck. Which pages have high clicks but low "average session duration"? Your content is likely failing to answer the user's question quickly.
- Kill the Fluff: Delete the "In the modern world..." introductions. Get to the point in the first two sentences.
- Add "Proof of Life": Include original photos, personal case studies, or data you gathered yourself. Show Google you actually exist.
- Fix Your "About" Page: Make it detailed. Link to your social profiles, your LinkedIn, and any publications where you’ve been featured.
- Use Schema Markup: This is code that helps Google understand the context of your page. If you're a "Person," use Person Schema. If you wrote a "Recipe," use Recipe Schema. It makes you look professional to the crawlers.
- Focus on Topical Authority: Don't write about "How to bake a cake" one day and "How to fix a car" the next. Pick a lane and own it. Google wants to see that you are an expert in a specific cluster of topics.
The landscape of search is changing with AI-generated Overviews (SGE), but the core principle remains the same. Google wants to send its users to a source that won't make them look stupid for clicking. Be that source. Be the person who provides the nuance, the "actually, it depends," and the real-world experience that a LLM simply cannot replicate.
Instead of chasing the next "hack," spend that time making your site genuinely useful. Check your site speed on PageSpeed Insights. Read your articles out loud to see if they sound like a human wrote them. If they don't, edit until they do. That is how you win in 2026.