Content Distribution
Google Discover Content Eligibility Checker
Paste a live article URL. We fetch the page and its lead image, then check every real signal Google Discover eligibility depends on — not just whether it "looks shareable".
Protected by reCAPTCHA. We fetch your page and its lead image server-side (SSRF-guarded) — nothing is stored.
Why most Discover audits miss the real blockers
Google Discover is one of the largest sources of organic traffic for publishers, yet it runs on signals most on-page checklists never mention. The two biggest are easy to miss entirely: the max-image-preview robots directive defaults to "standard" — a small thumbnail — unless a page explicitly opts into "large", the size Discover actually shows; and a compelling image only counts if it is genuinely large, which no tool can confirm without decoding the actual image bytes. This checker fetches your real page and your real lead image and measures both directly.
What this checks
Five real signal groups, each with a concrete fix when it fails.
max-image-preview directive
Reads every applicable robots meta tag (robots, googlebot) and the X-Robots-Tag response header, combines them the way Google does (most restrictive wins), and flags it when the directive is missing (defaults to "standard"), set to "standard", or blocked entirely with "none" / noimageindex.
Real lead-image pixel size
Picks the candidate lead image (og:image, then twitter:image, then JSON-LD image), fetches the actual file, and decodes its true width and height — never trusting the URL or a declared attribute. Flags anything under Google's roughly 1200px-wide guidance, and anything too small to use at all.
Article schema & freshness dates
Looks for Article / NewsArticle / BlogPosting JSON-LD, and validates that headline, datePublished and dateModified are present, correctly formatted, and internally consistent (modified date not before published date).
Indexability
A noindex directive anywhere in the combined robots signals removes a page from Discover entirely — checked first since nothing else matters if this fails.
Headline quality (advisory)
A conservative, advisory-only heuristic for excessive punctuation, ALL-CAPS ratio and common sensational phrasing. Google's actual content-policy enforcement can't be fully automated — treat this as a hint, not a verdict.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need AMP to appear in Google Discover?
No. Google dropped the AMP requirement for Discover in 2021. This checker treats AMP as informational only — present or not, it never affects the score.
What does max-image-preview:standard actually cost me?
Without an explicit "large" value, Google shows only a small thumbnail-sized image in Discover instead of the full-width card format, which measurably reduces click-through. Most sites never set this directive at all and don't realize the default is already limiting them.
Why fetch the actual image instead of just checking the og:image tag exists?
A tag pointing at a real file that happens to be 400px wide will pass a "tag exists" check and still fail Discover's image-quality bar. This tool downloads the image and decodes its real pixel dimensions from the bytes, the same class of check a manual review would do.
Does having Article schema guarantee Discover eligibility?
No single signal guarantees inclusion — Discover selection also depends on content quality, freshness and user interest signals Google doesn't expose. Article schema with accurate dates and a headline is a strong, well-documented supporting signal, not a guarantee.
Is my URL or its content stored anywhere?
No. The fetch happens server-side for this one check and the result is returned directly to your browser; nothing is written to a database or log beyond a rate-limit counter.