Google’s Discover Feed displays news articles and other written content from around the web. For the first time, the Google Search Discover feed on Android now displays likes directly beneath the articles.
The like button resembles those found on Twitter and other social media sites. However, Google’s experimentation with the “like” button could have a significant impact on the article’s exposure or the amount of traffic it produces from viewers/readers.
It’s feasible that Google will introduce likes as a means for people to determine whether or not an article in the Discover feed is worth reading. For the time being, the test is limited to a small group of people, so we can’t predict whether the functionality will be made public or not.
The Discover feed is primarily used to provide users with tailored information based on their Google search history and preferences. As a result, the purpose of like appears to be obsolete for the time being, especially because the feed is already tailored to your preferences.
However, media companies may consider the addition of likes to the Discover stream as an incentive to promote their content on the platform, similar to how Facebook likes have become a powerful statistic for businesses over time.
Google’s testing of something similar for its own platform hints that a similar business plan is already being considered at the search engine behemoth. Because the Discover feed is available on Android phones, confining the test to that platform makes reasonable.
Google I/O 2022 is just around the corner, we’ll probably hear more about the feedback its Discover feed testing has got and an indication of whether the like feature will make it to every Android smartphone user in the near future.
