--- title: "What Google's own Discover documentation actually requires" url: https://seomadman.com/reports/discover-technical-eligibility-requirements section: reports published: 2026-06-30T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-06-30T00:00:00.000Z author: Adam Hafez topics: ["Content strategy"] --- # What Google's own Discover documentation actually requires ## The short answer Google's own Discover documentation requires images at least 1200 pixels wide with more than 300,000 total pixels, paired with the max-image-preview:large meta setting, to be eligible for large-image treatment. It also names clickbait, sensationalism, and withheld context as reasons Discover will not recommend a page, and states no special structured data is required. ## Key takeaways - Google's Discover documentation sets an image floor of at least 1200 pixels wide with more than 300,000 total pixels, shown alongside a 16x9 example. - That image size only matters combined with the max-image-preview:large setting; without it, Discover will not use a large image treatment at all. - Google names clickbait and sensationalism specifically, describing tactics that use misleading or exaggerated details or that cater to morbid curiosity, titillation, or outrage. - Discover will withhold recommendations from content that hides crucial information needed to understand what it is about, even if the page is otherwise eligible. - Google's page states no special structured data is required for eligibility; schema.org markup or an og:image tag only controls which image gets picked. Most Discover advice sites describe impact after the fact: which pages gained, which dropped, which update caused it. Google's own Discover documentation reads differently. It is a checklist of what has to be true about a page before Discover will consider surfacing it at all, and its exact wording rarely survives being paraphrased. ## The image requirement, exactly as Google states it Google's page sets a specific floor: images should be "at least 1200 px wide" with "high resolution of more than 300,000 total pixels," illustrating this with a 16x9 example image at 1280x720 pixels, which comes to 921,600 total pixels. That size requirement is written to work alongside the `max-image-preview:large` setting, either the meta robots tag or a corresponding HTTP header. Without that setting present, Discover does not apply a large-image treatment to the page regardless of how the image itself is sized, so the pixel floor and the meta setting function as a pair, not two independent options. Google's page also states plainly that no special tags or structured data are required for basic Discover eligibility. Where it does make a recommendation, it is narrower than eligibility: use either schema.org markup or an `og:image` meta tag to tell Google which image on the page to prefer, which is a control over image selection, not a gate on whether the page can appear at all. ## Google's documented content policies for Discover Beyond formatting, Google's Discover page names specific content behaviors it screens for, in its own words. It tells publishers to "avoid clickbait and similar tactics to artificially inflate engagement by using misleading or exaggerated details," and separately to "avoid sensationalism tactics that manipulate appeal by catering to morbid curiosity, titillation, or outrage." A third, related standard: content that withholds crucial information required to understand what it is about is treated the same way, even short of outright misleading claims. The page also lists content types Discover "might not recommend" outright: job applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, and satirical content. These are named as categories, not as penalties for a specific violation, so a page can be well-formed and non-misleading and still sit outside Discover's surface simply by falling into one of them. For what these documented policies looked like in practice during a real ranking change, not just as written rules, see our report on [Google's February 2026 Discover-only core update](/news/discover-first-dedicated-algorithm-update/), which covers the verified before-and-after impact data from that rollout. This piece is limited to what Google's own eligibility page states; it does not repeat that impact analysis. ## Why we care The two halves of this documentation matter for different reasons. The image spec is a pass or fail technical check: a publishing workflow that ships images narrower than 1200 pixels, or that omits `max-image-preview:large`, has ruled itself out of Discover's large-image treatment before any editorial judgment about the article applies. The content policies are the opposite, a set of editorial standards Google states it applies regardless of how technically correct the page is. Treat both as gates to clear before publishing, not diagnostics to run after traffic disappoints. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is 1200 pixels a hard cutoff for Discover images? Google's page states an image should be at least 1200 pixels wide with more than 300,000 total pixels, but this requirement only takes effect when the page also carries the max-image-preview:large setting. Without that setting, Discover can still surface the page, just without the larger image treatment the size requirement is written for. ### Does Discover need its own structured data? No. Google's page states plainly that no special tags or structured data are required for basic eligibility. It recommends schema.org markup or an og:image meta tag only as a way to control which image Discover picks, not as an eligibility requirement. ### Does this replace general Google content quality guidance? No, and it should not be read as a substitute for it. This piece only covers what Google's Discover-specific documentation states directly, because that page is a distinct eligibility surface from ranking guidance for regular Search. ## Sources 1. [Get your content on Google Discover](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-discover) - Google Search Central (primary)