A Google representative confirmed with X (formerly Twitter) that while it can be blocked in Google News, there is no way to block content from appearing in Google Discover.
The conversation was started by Lily Ray, who expressed concern about a common challenge where certain content doesn’t suit Google News or Discover, but performs well in organic search results.
Ray said:
“We have seen many situations with our publisher clients where it would be useful to prevent certain content from being crawled/indexed for Google News and Discover.
However, this content often performs very well in organic search, so we don't recommend noindexing it entirely.
This content often falls into a grey area prohibited by Google's News and Discover guidelines, but still drives a ton of SEO traffic, and we've noticed that having too much of this content can negatively impact your Discover performance over time.
Outside of the SafeSearch guidelines, has Google ever considered a mechanism to prevent individual pages from being included in News/Discover?
Google's response
In response to Ray's question, a Google search representative pointed to existing ways to block content from Google News.
However, when we checked with John Mueller from Google’s Search Relations team, the liaison confirmed that these practices do not apply to Google Discover.
A search liaison officer said:
“John [Mueller] I've checked and it doesn't appear there is an option to block content from Discover.”
Recognizing the potential value of such a feature, he added:
“I thought that would be helpful, so I passed it on.”
John and I checked and it looks like there isn't an option to just block content from Discover. I thought that would be useful, so I mentioned it.
— Google Search Liaison (@searchliaison) July 15, 2024
What does this mean?
This admission by Google highlights a gap in publishers' ability to control how Google crawls their content.
While content crawl management tools exist for Google News and organic search results, similar controls don't exist for Discover, which creates challenges.
Google's Search Liaison suggests that more granular controls are possible, but there are no immediate plans to introduce content blocking features to Discover.
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