Google Says Age Verification Site Requirements May Prevent Site From Showing In Google Discover

Danny Sullivan of Google said on Twitter that he believes that sites that require age verification would not surface in Google Discover. He added he has to confirm this but has not responded in three days since saying this originally.

Danny wrote “I’ll see if I can find out but it’s highly likely our systems wouldn’t surface content that requires age verification in Discover.”

This came up after an interesting Twitter thread started by Lily Ray had JC ask if age verification would prevent a site from showing in Google Discover. Personally, I rarely see any site with age verification come up when I do searchers, I guess I am not searching for such things. And while I don’t use Google Discover much, I have not seen it there either.

Here is the Twitter thread so you have the context:

Despite Google saying “you can’t optimize for Discover,” it’s still crucial for many sites to dig into that data, especially if the site makes money off ads.

If you look at the patterns, there is a lot you can uncover…

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 26, 2022

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That’s a good question I don’t know the answer to but my feeling is yes.

Maybe @badams knows.

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 26, 2022

To be honest, no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a website requiring AV show up in Discover, but I’m not sure if it’s an automatic disqualification based on the AV interstitial or if Google doesn’t want to show websites with adult-only content in the feed.

— Barry Adams 📰 (@badams) July 26, 2022

I’ll see if I can find out but it’s highly likely our systems wouldn’t surface content that requires age verification in Discover.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) July 26, 2022

Interesting conversation – don’t you think?

Also, have you ever seen an age verification page come up in Google Discover?

Forum discussion at Twitter.