Google Web Stories at a Glance

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Who among us hasn’t seen them, all those entertaining and colorful short videos on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook? How much time do we spend swiping through all of these stories, liking and sharing them with our friends and followers. Packed with appealing images and a gripping narrative, this is the obvious way to convey information easily and with a wide range of coverage.

Google Web Stories: what are the advantages?

  • Range
    Stories on platforms like Instagram, TikTok or Facebook can usually only be viewed within their respective apps, while Google Web Stories can be discovered via search engines, allowing brands to reach users who are not active on social media and to target their audience more precisely based on search intent rather than platform usage.
  • Google Web Stories for SEO
    Unlike social media stories that disappear after 24 hours, Google Web Stories remain visible in search results and can appear in a wide range of Google searches, increasing long-term visibility, traffic and conversion potential by integrating links and call-to-actions that guide users directly to the website.
  • What does an ideal Google Web Story look like?
    An ideal Google Web Story focuses on strong storytelling, engaging visuals and concise text, capturing user attention within seconds by avoiding long introductions and presenting clear, visually appealing content that communicates the message quickly and effectively.
  • Offer users helpful and interesting content
    Google prioritizes Web Stories that provide helpful, relevant and engaging information, using short and precise texts, descriptive titles of around 70 characters and a balanced use of animations that enhance the content without distracting from the core message.
Google Web Stories for WordPress

There is a more straightforward way to get beautiful Web Stories onto Google, too. And that’s the plug-in for WordPress from Google, which can be installed directly in WordPress. Based on the “building block system” principle, the plug-in allows website owners to create their own Google Web Stories using various templates and an editor.

The templates offered are of very high graphic quality and visually appealing. The editor allows you to customize and edit the templates.

Google Web Stories guidelines

  • Copyright
    Just like everywhere else in the online and offline world, the creator’s rights are paramount. Google has earmarked Web Stories for publishing original works. In other words, Web Stories containing other people’s copyrighted works are only authorized if valid permission has also been obtained from the copyright holder.
  • Text
    Stories will only be published if they are deemed not to be too text heavy. More specifically, this means that the story should contain fewer than 180 characters. Similarly, Google recommends keeping the videos short. It makes sense to limit the time to less than 50 seconds per page here.
  • Quality
    Web Stories with images and videos that are heavily pixelated or stretched are neither nice to look at for the user, nor are they considered to be of quality by Google. This is why it is very important to get professional help with the design of the Web Stories, if you do not possess the necessary design skills.
  • Advertising focus
    Google Web Stories are primarily intended to provide the user with entertaining information about a topic. Stories are not to be used as a pure advertising platform. Stories with an overly strong advertising emphasis will be penalized by Google and, if serious violations are detected, may even result in a website being permanently excluded from Web Stories. Find out here about Google’s content policies for Web Stories.
  • With programming skills
    There are several options for publishing compelling Web Stories to attract new visitors to your brand. The Web Stories are based on the AMP framework. AMP is short for Accelerated Mobile Page and is a version of HTML specifically designed for creating websites for mobile devices. To most of us, this may already sound quite complicated. This has been a major catch for the creation of Web Stories on Google up to now because without programming skills, you couldn’t publish the stories. For programmers with knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, amp.dev has instructions for creating the first story.
Google Web Stories in 5 steps

For your story to appear in search results in conjunction with your product, the Web Story must be linked to the article:

  1. First create the post in WordPress
  2. Build a Google Web Story to go with the post
  3. Publish the story from the Web Stories dashboard in WordPress.
  4. You can now display the story link in the preview
  5. You then incorporate the link into the WordPress post using a Gutenberg block element

We recommend the following explanatory video: Pete McPherson takes you step by step through the creation of your first Google Web Story with the WordPress plug-in in his tutorial

Although publishing Stories is made much easier with the WordPress plug-in, it is still far from being as user-friendly as the stories on social media apps, for example. There is also no guarantee that the Web Stories will display the created story in the search results. Moreover, since it is still a new ad type, Google Web Stories are often not displayed as frequently as video results. So the question is, is it even worth the effort? We would say that if you already have great content and images, then they can certainly drive traffic to your website. At the same time, you should think about your target audience. Since Web Stories are only displayed on mobile devices and displaying information as a story is a more familiar format among younger people, you may find that a story could go unnoticed by your target audience. Nevertheless, since Google is obviously allocating resources to Google Web Stories and the circumstances and demands of internet users are constantly changing, it cannot be ruled out that Google Web Stories will be pushed more strongly in the search results in the near future by Google and acquire even more prominence.

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