Google wants to cash in on the short-lived content hype to take content creation and discovery to a whole new level. As a result, Google has also jumped on the disappearing stories bandwagon to drive ephemeral content discovery within its search engine.
Google wants to be more like Snapchat
Of late, all major social media and messaging platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp have implemented disappearing stories. In fact, LinkedIn happens to be the most recent platform to have come up with a similar feature in the form of LinkedIn Stories.
Google doesn’t want to be left behind when it comes to offering ephemeral content that disappears within 24 hours of posting. However, Google Search results aren’t user-generated, unlike content on social media platforms.
Sure, the website content indexed in Google Search is user-generated. But there’s no way users can subscribe to a specific website or content creator to decide what results show up in Google Search (at least for now).
So, how will ephemeral content work for Google Search, you may wonder? Well, that’s where the Google app for Android and iOS comes into play.
Google is pushing Web Stories to Discover, which is part of the Google app on Android and iOS. The app has more than 800 million monthly active users, according to Google.
Google Discover now offers a new Stories carousel in select countries such as the United States, India, and Brazil. Available at the top of Discover, it will help users visual content from across the Internet.
The search giant is looking to expand Web Stories to more countries and Google products in the near future.
“Tap to move forward to the next page, or swipe to an entirely different Story in the carousel,” said Vamsee Jasti, Web Stories Product Manager at Google. In addition to Discover, we continue to surface more Web Stories across Google Search results globally on mobile.”
Are Web Stories a new AMP?
Similar to accelerated mobile pages (AMP), Web Stories will prioritize mobile-first indexing. Google is working with more than 2,000 publishers to get their Web Stories discovered in Search.
To recall, Google recently announced the Web Stories plug-in for WordPress. This way, content creators can create and share their Web Stories across Google Search.
