Google has been sending notices to publishers with directions for how to make their content more discoverable by Google Assistant. Notifications are being sent via Search Console, which means they may be sent via email as well.
Google is currently sending notifications to US podcast, recipe, and news publishers who have invested in either AMP or structured data markup. The company has developed Google Assistant “Actions” specifically for those content types, so users can ask the Assistant to return content from such publishers.
In order to make this type of content more discoverable, Google has auto-generated directory pages with the various actions that are associated with finding content from a specific site. These are the commands that can be used within Google Assistant to find content from your site.
With the appropriate structured data and/or AMP markup, content will already by optimized for Google Assistant. Technically, there is nothing more the site owner needs to do, but there is one more step to take if you want to customize your actions directory.
Google’s Search Console notifications prompt the site owner to claim their actions directory page. Claiming the directory page will allow site owners to edit it, or unpublish it if they do not want their content found by Google Assistant.
After claiming a directory page a publisher will be able to edit their name, description, and logo according to how they want it to be surfaced by Google Assistant. If a directory page goes unclaimed, the auto-generated version will still exist and the actions within can still be used with Google Assistant.
Here are several examples of the notifications being sent to publishers:
Booyah! pic.twitter.com/GRQXVIxxK7
— lorenbaker (@lorenbaker) January 9, 2018
Whoa… just got this new search console notification I've never seen before about making Podcasts more discoverable in Google Assistant pic.twitter.com/PfrMYLkChe
— Dan Shure (@dan_shure) January 9, 2018
Bunch of clients got an email today inviting them to claim a directory page for Google Assistant. This is a new message to me. Haven't seen it before. pic.twitter.com/3Ecykdz7hX
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) January 9, 2018
