Web Stories are coming to Google Discover

October 8, 2020 news

Web Stories is being expanded to show in more Google areas.

Google announced it is now bringing the Web Stories feature (previously known as AMP Stories) to Google Discover. So not only can you find Web Stories in Google Search and some other supported platforms, it is now also going to surface in Google Discover – in the Google iOS and Android app.

The announcement. Google said “Today we are bringing visual and immersive Web Stories to Discover which is part of the Google app on Android and iOS. The Stories carousel, now available in the United States, India and Brazil at the top of Discover, helps you find some of the best visual content from around the web. In the future, we intend to expand Web Stories to more countries and Google surfaces.”

What it looks like. Here is a GIF of it in action:

How it works. You can browse Google’s Web Stories when you tap on a Story on the shelf, you enter “an experience that’s full-screen and immersive”, Google said. Tap to move forward to the next page, or swipe to an entirely different Story in the carousel.

How do I make Web Stories. Google has documentation on the AMP site on how to build out Web Stories. Here are the docs on how to help them show up in Google Search. There are also plugins and tools for WordPress, to make this easier to create these Web Stories.

Why we care. Web Stories in search and now Google Discover can lead to nice traffic for some publishers. You may want to see how you can bake Web Stories into your content production workflow and track how well it performs within your analytics and conversation tracking tools.