Google Discover: uses, applications and challenges in the digital journalism of Spain, Brazil, and Greece [journal article]

Abstract

Purpose: This paper constitutes the first academic study to be made of Google Discover as applied to online journalism.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper constitutes the first academic study to be made of Google Discover as applied to online journalism. The study involved conducting 61 semi-structured interviews with experts that are representative of a range of different professional profiles within the fields of journalism and search engine positioning (SEO) in Brazil, Spain and Greece. Based on the data collected, we created five semantic categories and compared the experts’ perceptions in order to detect common response patterns.

Findings: Our results confirm the existence of different degrees of convergence and divergence in the opinions expressed in these three countries regarding the main dimensions of Google Discover, including specific strategies using the feed, its impact on web traffic, its impact on both quality and sensationalist content and on the degree of responsibility shown by the digital media in its use. We are also able to propose a set of best practices that journalists and digital media in-house web visibility teams should take into account to increase their probability of appearing in Google Discover. To this end, we consider strategies in the following areas of application: topics, different aspects of publication, elements of user experience, strategic analysis and diffusion and marketing.

Originality: Although research exists on the application of SEO to different areas, there have not, to date, been any studies examining Google Discover.

Keywords

Digital media, Google Discover, search engine optimization, online journalism, mobile news, personalized news, web visibility, Google

1. Introduction

Search engine optimization (SEO), understood as the set of practices that helps ensure the content of a given website appears among the leading results of search engines such as Google or Bing (Veglis and Giomelakis, 2020), has become a key business strategy in digital journalism for increasing audiences (Carlson, 2007). This reflects the fact that search engines help users select the most relevant content in response to their queries (Machill et al., 2008) and, it is for this reason, as well as a result of the hypercompetition among the information industries served by the Internet, that the digital media have become so dependent on SEO (Lopezosa et al., 2020).

This growing dependence has been responsible for an increase in studies of the web visibility of the news media and the publication of highly insightful reports on the application of SEO in journalism, most notably Giomelakis & Veglis (2016) and Charlton (2016), who confirm that much has yet to be done in enhancing both SEO and journalistic routines; Dick (2011) and Smyrnaios & Sire (2014), who highlight the need to promote an optimal convergence between the best possible journalism and the best possible SEO; and Lopezosa et al. (2021) and Pedrosa & de Morais (2021), who describe practical SEO techniques applied in newsrooms.

This growing body of studies concerns itself with the visibility of the news media on digital platforms; however, their web visibility is subject to constant evolution. In fact, today, we find users are also consuming information via other channels, including, for example, Google Discover (Google, 2020a), a smartphone service that offers its search results based on what it considers to be a good match with user interests and profiles rather than on keywords related to a specific query.

This evolving situation highlights a clear research gap that this study seeks, at least in part, to fill. Specifically, our primary goal here is to examine the characteristics of Google Discover from the point of view of how it affects journalism and to present a diagnosis of its impact in, and optimization for, the news media of three countries: namely Brazil, Greece and Spain.

To achieve this primary goal, we set ourselves the following specific objectives:

1) Survey the opinions about Google Discover, as applied to digital journalism, held by SEO experts from Brazil, Spain and Greece working in the digital media and in consultancy firms.

2) Determine the degree of perceived agreement among the professionals from the three countries regarding the role played by different dimensions of Google Discover as applied to the cybermedia.

3) Identify, based on the findings to objective 2 above, the tasks that journalists and the media’s in-house web visibility teams are carrying out or should be carrying out in relation to Google Discover and propose a set of best practices.

(…)

Useful link

• Article in journal web page

Citation

Lopezosa, C., Giomelakis, D., Pedrosa, L. and Codina, L. (2023). «Google Discover: uses, applications and challenges in the digital journalism of Spain, Brazil and Greece». Online Information Review. DOI https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-10-2022-0574

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