Last October, we created a home for Web Stories in Google Discover so users could find a personalized stream of the best Web Stories from around the internet. The goal with Web Stories is to enable publishers and creators to easily build and take full ownership of their content. 

The reception from publishers has been amazing. Over 20 million Web Stories are already online, with 100,000 new Stories being added daily. And people on 6,500 new domains have published Web Stories since October 2020. 

Millions of viewers are also seeing and engaging with Web Stories every day on Google Discover and Google Search. Through this immersive and intuitive format, viewers can  take a virtual snorkeling trip, try a new workout, and make tasty desserts.

In our chats with creators, we’ve heard that they want more insights and resources to help them create the content their audiences are eager to view. Here’s are some useful things we’ve learned so far:

1. Lifestyle content, with aspirational imagery, informative how-to info, and relevant product-partnership opportunities, fits      the Story format well and has the highest engagement of any vertical.

4. There is no “perfect” page length for high-quality Stories, but we’ve noticed that users tend to click or tap through an              average of 11-15 pages. 

5. On Google Discover, users watch an average of 1.7 Stories for every Story opened, but this can vary significantly across            demographics.

We look forward to sharing more insights to help you produce the best Web Stories for your audience. To learn more about how to get started with Web Stories, visit Stories.Google.

Today we are bringing visual and immersive Web Stories to Discover, part of the Google app on Android and iOS and used by more than 800 million people each month. The Stories carousel, now available in the United States, India and Brazil at the top of Discover, helps you find some of the best visual content from around the web. In the future, we intend to expand Web Stories to more countries and Google products.

Browsing Stories is simple. When you tap on a Story on the shelf, you enter an experience that’s full-screen and immersive. Tap to move forward to the next page, or swipe to an entirely different Story in the carousel.

In addition to Discover, we continue to surface more Web Stories across Google Search results globally on mobile. 

Made for the Web

For creators and publishers, Web Stories are entirely under your direction, just like any other content on your website. Story authors are in full control of monetization, hosting, sharing and adding links to their Stories. Plus, the web offers one of the largest audiences for creators, with publishers already seeing strong results, as shown in the stories.google showcase. And because Web Stories are just an extension of a website, some early adopters of Web Stories are showcasing their stories on their home page, social channels, newsletters and more.

To help jumpstart the Web Stories ecosystem, we worked with a diverse group of publishers and creation tools in the U.S, India and Brazil this year to collaborate on the product and build out its features.

It’s easy to get started

Web Stories can be created by anyone, whether you are an individual creator or a publisher, and more than 2,000 websites have already published Stories that have been indexed by Google.

We can’t wait to see what stories you tell.