Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · Serving and ranking
Google's Discover talk (photographed slides only) showed an eligibility gate: content with policy violations or low quality is filtered out, and safe, trusted content becomes eligible. Google's docs say indexed content that meets the Discover content policies is eligible automatically, with no special markup, and that Discover uses many of the same signals as Search. Quality is judged through E-E-A-T, where trust comes first. For eligible content, image quality drives click-through: Google recommends images at least 1,200 px wide, over 300,000 total pixels and 16x9, enabled by max-image-preview:large, and warns against logos, text-heavy images and misleading or outrageous ones. This extends Day 2, where Google said max-image-preview:large matters mainly in Discover, and Google's Discover content policies ask news sources for clear dates, bylines and author, publisher and contact information. Discover demand cannot be read from Google Trends, which counts only typed searches (Day 2). On Day 2 Gary Illyes repeated that max-image-preview:large can make content perform surprisingly well in Discover.
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Setting the max-image-preview robots meta tag to large can make content perform surprisingly well in Discover, Gary Illyes said.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 2, 13:50 · Using images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videosEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-IDX-04
Google's Discover slide showed an eligibility gate: content with a policy violation goes to a policy compliance check and low-quality content to an E-E-A-T quality check, and both can end with the content filtered out, while safe and trusted content becomes eligible for Discover.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Google's Discover slide said that for eligible content image quality decides click-through: a small thumbnail lowers the click-through rate and a large, high-resolution image raises it.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirement DEV-IMG-07
Google's Discover slide defined E-E-A-T: experience means first-hand, personal experience with the topic, expertise the necessary knowledge or skill, and authoritativeness the extent to which the creator or website is known as a go-to source for the topic.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Used byglossary term E-E-A-T
Google's Discover slide said trust comes first: untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T however experienced, expert or authoritative they seem.
“untrustworthy pages will have low E-E-A-T no matter how Experienced, Expert or Authoritative they may seem”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Used byglossary term E-E-A-T
Google's Discover slide recommended large images at least 1,200 px wide, with more than 300,000 total pixels and a 16x9 aspect ratio, enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirements DEV-IDX-04, DEV-IMG-07
Google's Discover slide said to avoid generic images, such as a site logo, and text-heavy images.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirement DEV-IMG-07
Google's Discover slide said images are subject to the same policy requirements as the content and that misleading, exaggerated or outrageous images should be avoided.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirement DEV-IMG-07
Google's closing Discover slide pointed to the Discover content policies in Google Search Help and to the Search Central documentation.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverEvidence slide photo
Google's Discover documentation says content is automatically eligible for Discover if it is indexed and meets Discover's content policies, needs no special tags or structured data, and is not guaranteed to appear.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on Discover
Used byglossary term Google Discover
Google's Discover documentation says Discover uses many of the same signals and systems as Search to determine what is helpful, people-first content.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on Discover
Used byglossary term Google Discover
Google's Discover documentation says to specify the large image with schema.org markup or the og:image meta tag, which can influence the thumbnail Discover chooses, and that a vertical image cropped to 16x9 must keep its important details.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on Discover
Used byrequirement DEV-IMG-07
Google's Discover content policies ask news sources for clear dates and bylines, information about the authors, publication and publisher, and contact information, and say repeated or egregious violations can make a site ineligible for Discover.
Publisher Google Search HelpAnnotates Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on Discover
For Discover, set max-image-preview:large on article templates, give every article a relevant image at least 1,200 px wide in og:image or schema.org markup that is neither the site logo nor text-heavy, and show clear bylines and dates.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:45 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on Discover
Used byrequirement DEV-IMG-07
Google's Discover slide recommended large images at least 1,200 px wide, with more than 300,000 total pixels and a 16x9 aspect ratio, enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting.
max-image-preview:large matters mainly in Discover, where it allows a large image that draws people's attention, so the rule can make a page more visible than leaving it out, John Mueller said.
Setting the max-image-preview robots meta tag to large can make content perform surprisingly well in Discover, Gary Illyes said.
max-image-preview:large matters mainly in Discover, where it allows a large image that draws people's attention, so the rule can make a page more visible than leaving it out, John Mueller said.
Google's Discover slide recommended large images at least 1,200 px wide, with more than 300,000 total pixels and a 16x9 aspect ratio, enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting.
Setting the max-image-preview robots meta tag to large can make content perform surprisingly well in Discover, Gary Illyes said.
Give every article a large, relevant lead image and declare it in og:image or markup
Rests on 6 claims, 6 of them in this topic
Allow full snippets and large previews with max-snippet:-1 and max-image-preview:large
Rests on 8 claims, 2 of them in this topic