Google officials confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that there’s no way to block content from appearing in Google Discover, despite the ability to do so for Google News.

The conversation was initiated by Lily Ray, who raised concerns about a common challenge where certain content may not be suitable for Google News or Discover but performs well in organic search results.

Ray states:

“We have experienced many situations with publisher clients where it would be helpful to prevent some content from being crawled/indexed specifically for Google News & Discover.

However, this content often performs incredibly well in organic search, so it’s not a good idea to noindex it across the board.

This content often falls in the grey area of what is forbidden in Google’s News & Discover guidelines, but still drives massive SEO traffic. We have noticed that having too much of this content appears to be detrimental to Discover performance over time.

Outside of your guidelines for SafeSearch – has Google considered a mechanism to prevent individual pages from being considered for News/Discover?”

Google’s Response

In response to Ray’s question, Google’s Search Liaison pointed to existing methods for blocking content from Google News.

However, upon checking with John Mueller of Google’s Search Relations team, the Liaison confirmed these methods don’t extend to Google Discover.

The Search Liaison stated:

“John [Mueller] and I pinged, and we’re pretty sure there’s not an option to just block content from Discover.”

Recognizing the potential value of such a feature, he added:

“That would seem useful, so we’ll pass it on.”

John and I pinged, and we’re pretty sure there’s not an option to just block content from Discover. That would seem useful, so we’ll pass it on.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 15, 2024

What Does This Mean?

This admission from Google highlights a gap in publishers’ ability to control how Google crawls their content.

While tools exist to manage content crawling for Google News and organic search results, the lack of similar controls for Discover presents a challenge.

Google’s Search Liaison suggests there’s potential for more granular controls, though there are no immediate plans to introduce content blocking features for Discover.

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