Google testing “Dive deeper” for Google Discover – it’s not good for publishers

Google announced it is now testing a new feature in Google Discover named “Dive deeper” that places AI-generated topic overviews within the Discover feed, replacing a slot where a publisher’s piece of content may show.

When you click into the “Dive deeper” card, you do get links to related articles, where you can learn more, but that is within a pretty in-depth and deeper look at the topic, which will likely result in users not clicking over to publishers to read more.

What Google said. Robby Stein from Google posted on X:

• “Today we’re experimenting with a new way to make exploring a topic and discovering related web content easier in Discover.”

He then explained how it works:

• “By tapping “Dive deeper,” you’ll see a short topic overview with prominent links to related stories, community reactions & original reporting.”

This is being tested on videos first but will expand it to more areas soon, Stein wrote:

• “We’ll test this experience on videos to start, and experiment with multiple designs in the weeks ahead (example below) as we iterate to learn what works best.”

What it looks like: Here is a screenshot of the flow from Google Discover, into the “Dive deeper” section:

Why we care. Google says there are “prominent links to related stories” but will users click on those links at a higher rate then they would a normal publisher card in Google Discover. Absolutely, no way. This will lead to even fewer clicks to publishers, and the sad thing is, Discover was the only significant source of Google traffic to publishers these days. It seems like those days are now numbered.