Google updating its Discover guidelines during an active Core Update is… telling.

Not because the documentation itself is new —
but because of when it happened.

Discover has always been treated as a kind of bonus layer:
extra impressions, unpredictable spikes, “nice to have” traffic.

But this timing suggests something else:

Discover is becoming less about clicks…
and more about selection.

A system where visibility is increasingly tied to:

• perceived quality

• entity trust

• editorial alignment

• long-term interpretability

• citability across AI-driven surfaces

In other words, Discover isn’t random anymore.

It’s closer to an editorial engine.

And if Discover becomes the clearest mirror of Google’s quality recalibration, then the takeaway is simple:

Rankings still matter.
But selection matters more.

We may be entering the era of selection engines —
where being understood and trusted beats being optimized and loud.

Spotted via Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick), as always.