No ability to block content in Google Discover: The problem and potential solutions

Google has officially confirmed that there is no way to block content on Google Discover, although this option exists for Google News. This question was brought up by Lily Ray, who expressed concern about the frequent problem where certain content may not be suitable for Google News or Discover, but shows up well in organic search results.

"We've seen many situations with publisher clients where it would be appropriate to prevent some content from being indexed specifically for Google News & Discover. However, this content often performs very well in organic search, so it's not a good idea to remove it entirely. This content is often in the gray area of what's not allowed in Google's News & Discover guidelines, but still drives a lot of SEO traffic. We've noticed that having too much of this content degrades over time metrics in Discover Has Google considered a mechanism to exclude individual pages from consideration for News/Discover?”

A Google representative answered Ray's question, pointing to the existing methods of blocking content from Google News. However, after consulting with John Mueller of Google's Search Relations team, he confirmed that these practices do not extend to Google Discover.

"John [Mueller] and I checked and we're pretty sure there's no way to just block content on Discover. It would be nice to have that option, so we're going to pass that on."

🚀 Google's admission that the lack of ability to block content in Google Discover highlights a gap in the ability of site owners to control how Google indexes their content. There are tools to manage content indexing for Google News and organic search results, but the lack of similar controls for Discover presents a challenge.

• 📌 Google Discover does not allow you to block content, while Google News does.
• 📌 Web developers lose control over how their content is indexed by Google.
• 📌 Google is considering making changes.