Google has started replacing publisher links in its Discover feed with AI-written posts summarising related stories.

The new feature, deployed sporadically so far, follows Discover changes which have already downgraded publisher posts in favour of content from X and Youtube. Publishers have seen a sharp drop in referral traffic from the news aggregation feed served to smartphone users.

The Discover AI summaries are similar to AI Overviews deployed in in the main search results, with Discover showing around two sentences before publisher logos appear in thumbnails indicating who has been cited.

The arrival of this feature in the UK was first flagged by Reach SEO and Discover director Nicola Agius on Linkedin.

She noticed a grouping of 14 publishers that covered Jennifer Lopez’s appearance at an Ariana Grande concert, and was only able to click on a link for the main publisher (People).

But, as Agius noted, the outlets included had taken several different angles on the story so did not duplicate each other. She said she would happily have clicked on more than one of the stories if she was given the chance by Google.

Speaking on a panel about the future of news SEO at an event hosted by The Audience Club in London on Thursday, Agius said: “A load of publishers all got bunched together, and what I noticed was that loads of publishers that were grouped together actually covered different angles, so one was about her outfit, one was about her dig at Ben Affleck, one is about her relationship with her daughter.

“And so the AI summary that Google used when it was grouping all these publishers together wasn’t even relevant to all of the stories that were being listed. I don’t know if that’s something that Google is going to address.”

Google has been contacted for comment.

‘Youtube is everywhere’: Video becoming even more key in Google products

The changes to how websites appear in Discover are happening alongside an increase in links to X and Youtube posts appearing in the feed from publishers and non-publishers alike.

Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy and research at Amsive, said: “Google’s making it really difficult, especially for publishers. One thing also that they’re doing in Discover that they’re also doing in AI Overviews and everywhere else, and with the recent core update it’s even more exacerbated, which is Youtube is everywhere.”

She said Youtube has jumped “off the chart” in search visibility analysis platform Sistrix over the past two weeks.

Ray continued: “One thing they’re doing in Discover is they not only group all the brand icons together as citations, but then when you click on the brand citation, it often takes you to the brand’s Youtube account.

“So I feel like, especially for journalists and publishers, as much as possible, taking your best people and trying to get them more on video and building up Tiktok accounts, Youtube accounts where they’re doing short videos and doing kind of data journalism through video, I think is going to be really effective as well.”

Google is reportedly separately developing a video tab for Discover.

Discover traffic to The Times ‘up a third’ since last year

Discover changes such as the increase in non-publisher social media posts have already led to referrals to publishers like Reach plummeting over the past year.

Agius noted that “the publishers that were doing really, really well in Discover this time last year were getting monster traffic” but the “Discover landscape has changed a lot”.

Citing data from Newzdash’s Discover Pulse tool, she said social media now makes up “almost a quarter” of the Discover feed but there are simultaneously “more publishers than ever getting into Discover” – about 64% more than last year. This includes more regional, hyperlocal and niche publications appearing, she said.

“So this time last year was a lot easier. There was less competition.”

But some publishers are still finding growth. Times deputy head of digital Anna Sbuttoni revealed on the panel that the newsbrand’s traffic from Google Discover was “up by more than a third year on year” in May.

She said the types of Times stories that are getting traffic are now increasingly “original reporting, serious news, hard news”.

This compares to last year when the “wild” Discover hits for The Times were more likely to be “quirky news stories” like shark bites. But The Times puts most importance on whether people are signing up, and then sticking around, as paying subscribers.

Sbuttoni added: “We very much position Google Discover as bonus traffic in the newsroom. We know it can boom and bust, and it doesn’t convert in the same way as search does, nowhere near. So, when you actually put the two pie charts together, they’re almost complete opposites, and search is our most valuable source of sign-ups, so that’s the area to protect.

“With Discover we enjoy the traffic when it comes, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t actually change that important sign-up metric for us.”

The experts on the Audience Club panel were positive about the recently-added Preferred Sources feature on Google, although Agius questioned whether people outside the news and SEO industry would be sufficiently aware of it.

Preferred Sources means that users can go into their source preferences in their Google settings and select their favourite sources so that they are more likely to see those websites in search results, AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Google has said people are “twice as likely to click through to a Preferred Source”.

Google has also begun to roll out search profiles giving publishers and other creators a page where people can showcase their latest content and let people choose to follow them. These pages can be found by clicking a publisher name in Discover or via direct URLs.

Ray described Preferred Sources as “exciting for publishers”.

She noted that in the US, Google is rolling out a more personalised AI Mode in which the platform can access a user’s email and calendar to make answers more personal.

“So I do think, in a sense, if they are really encouraging this Preferred Sources thing, they’re probably trying to get it to a point where they’re going to give you more news from the sources that you trust,” she said. “So hopefully that’s helpful, because you might be more likely to click through.”

Reach’s Agius said: “I love Preferred Sources. I think it’s a step in the right direction. My only concern about it is that we obviously know what it is, but does my mum know? Does my sister? Does she care? No. But I think, like, that’s not Google’s job, that’s our job to educate our readers what it is, and to try and encourage them to sign up to it.”

Many major publishers now have a button near the top of article pages on their websites inviting readers to “prefer” them on Google.

Agius also advised: “You need original content. You need to establish what your brand identity is if you want people to start adding you as a preferred source or start following your publisher profile.”

Agius also noted that the rate of spam websites appearing in Google Discover (including untrue stories from publishers that popped up overnight) appears to have been addressed after an influx of them over much of the past year.

She said Google “seem to have worked on the spam issue. It looks a bit better to me”.

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