Don’t Mention It: Google Discover’s “Mentioned” Feature & Why Affiliate & Product Review Sites Should Care

By Ethan Lazuk

If you create product review articles that are eligible for Google Discover, you’ll likely be interested in the “Mentioned in this article” feature.

This is the case especially for affiliate sites that were impacted by Google’s third HCU or March 2024 core update.

Not because Google Discover traffic, like Search traffic, can be impacted by these updates, although that’s true, but rather because the “Mentioned in this article” feature both complements and competes with product review content in Discover.

On a positive note, reviewing this feature could provide insights to reform your thinking about how to create more helpful and people-first content around products to help recover from these updates, or avoid them, perhaps.

In this article, we’ll look at examples of the “Mentioned in this article” feature, hypothesize how it works, and compare it to affiliate articles from a user’s point of view.

But first, let’s discuss what this feature is.

What is the “Mentioned” feature in Google Discover?

The “Mentioned” feature appears below eligible articles in Google Discover and highlights one or more entities from them.

There are four now seven variations of this feature, that I’m aware of, depending on the type of article, associated entities, or user’s history.

1. Mentioned

The original variation is called “Mentioned.”

I’ve always seen it refer to geographic business entities.

Here’s an example from my Discover feed:

I get museums there a lot, for some reason.

In some cases, the mentioned entity even matches the article’s publisher.

2. Mentioned places

The second version is one that I just noticed recently called “Mentioned places.”

I live in Orlando, so that result above was likely relevant from my location-based data.

Clicking either of these goes to a local knowledge panel for the entity (GBP).

3. Get the latest on

There’s also a variation called “Get the latest on.”

I’ve never seen this one myself, but here are examples from an October 2023 article on Search Engine Roundtable:

It’s also hypothesized in that article that this can appear for any entity, but particularly authors.

I’m not sure what results it triggers, but I’m guessing it’s a SERP with the entity as a query.

4. Mentioned in this article

There’s also a variation called “Mentioned in this article.”

This is the one that I see most often these days. It’s also the focus of the rest of this post.

What’s interesting about “Mentioned in this article” is it always includes products, as far as I can tell.

Here’s the first example I captured in February of 2024:

Clicking those results opens product knowledge panels with Google shopping graph data.

We’ll look at several examples in a moment, but first I want to go over two more variations I’ve recently seen in April of 2024.

5. Related to this article

This is an interesting variation called “Related to this article.” It shows a product, but not necessarily one mentioned in the article.

It’s possible this is a looser variation of the “Mentioned in this article” feature, as those products aren’t always verbatim to the article. Quite interesting.

Update: As of late May 2024, this is the most common variation I’ve been seeing, and the product tends to be from the same article, sometimes in groups of twos.

6. Continue browsing

This “Continue browsing” option is perhaps the most interesting one. The Google Nest Hub Max was a product I was searching related to another blog article.

So based on my search history, Google Discover not only shows suggested products, but also an article that mentions them. In that sense, this could benefit publishers as much as sellers through Google Shopping.

It’s not uncommon to see a product grid in Google Discover for a product you recently searched for. But this variation with the article attached is quite interesting.

7. Mentioned in (main results)

Back in August of 2023, Google did a test for “Mentioned in” in the main search results:

Is this a new feature? pic.twitter.com/oiJnJ5mcD3

— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) August 29, 2023

This is like the reverse of what we’ve seen in Discover so far. Instead of showing products mentioned on a page, it’s showing pages where a brand (entity) was mentioned:

8. Most mentioned places (main results)

During Google I/O 2024 in May, Google announced AI-organized results pages, where one of the features shown in the demo video was “Most mentioned places,” as shown below.

We saw “Mentioned places” at number 2, but this is the second instance of this feature we’ve seen outside of Discover and in the SERP. Albeit, it’s a personalized SERP, which makes it sort of like Discover in that regard.

If this is happening for places, could it happen just as easily for products? Interesting thought.

Speaking of which …

Let’s return to the fourth variation, “Mentioned in this article” to look at some product-related examples.

Examples of “Mentioned in this article” for affiliate product review articles

I gathered screenshots of every instance of “Mentioned in this article” that came through my Discover feed over the last few days.

I have a lot saved, but so far I’ve added three.

For each example, we’ll look at the products listed and the articles they’re from.

Preliminary observations

Before we delve in, here are some observations overall:

• The “Mentioned in this article” feature seems to only appear for me in the daytime, never at night.
• The articles associated are mostly affiliate ones, but not exclusively.
• The formats of the articles vary from individual product reviews (single product mentioned) to product comparisons or lists of products (two products mentioned).
• After viewing products a few times, I had to update my preferences to say I wasn’t “shopping for” (interested in) them, or else the category kept appearing.
• The articles had ads, ads, and more ads. It was to the point where some were borderline unreadable (as you’ll see in the screenshots below).

Now let’s look at the first few examples.

1. Best gifts for writers – Esquire

The first example I found was on April 1st from Esquire.

I didn’t take as many screenshots of this one’s product knowledge panel. (I learned better as I went.)

However, if we consider the criteria of Google’s review system, it’s interesting to consider what little value this article offers, especially relative to the information from Google’s shopping graph.

Here’s how the article appeared in my Discover feed.

The two products Google selected for mentioning were a word processor and a flower vase.

The word processor in the article is available from the manufacturer directly for $499.00.

In the product knowledge panel, Google shows two retailers, including one at a 20% discount, except it’s out of stock.

Interestingly, it shows two retailers available, but the manufacturer isn’t listed.

We also see the user reviews average is juxtaposed by those from WIRED and PCMag, giving us a variety.

The second product mentioned was a glass vase shaped like a book.

What’s interesting here is Google shows Snapklik as the first retailer selling the vase for around $25, which is higher than the $17-$20 average range.

Since it’s available at 10+ stores, we see three retailers mentioned in total, also including Walmart and eBay.

eBay also goes above the typical price range.

Even more interesting, the Esquire article lists this product on Amazon for $13, lower than anything shown here by Google.

In this case, I think a user might prefer the affiliate article to Google’s shopping graph options, for the sake of the price.

As for why these two were selected, it appears Google choice the highest and lowest priced products from the list.

One is also from the featured image.

These products were also listed back to back in the article.

Whether that’s why they were selected, I can’t say yet.

As for the article’s content, we can see the affiliate disclaimer on top of the page:

Esquire is a known publication, but the article doesn’t really explain why these are the best products.

All it says is that writers need good “vibes” and are “often caffeine addicts.”

There is nothing that speaks about the author using these products, and the descriptions are short and generic.

To me, this isn’t a great article.

For example, the description of the word processor is three sentences. It claims you can write without distraction (why?) and has an “easy-to-see” screen (per whom?).

Or maybe that’s intentional?

Perhaps this is a strategic approach to give little detail and force people to click on the affiliate links to learn more about the products?

The page also has a ton of ads, though. Here I revisited it on desktop:

As for the author’s credentials, her bio page has no information about her, other than showing she writes a lot of best-product articles.

All told, it’s interesting that Google recommends a word processor and a glass vase, seemingly an odd pair.

If I were interested in the vase, I’d probably want to read the article to find the lowest-priced option.

As for the word processor, the article offers almost no value, other than a link to the manufacturer’s site, which Google didn’t include.

In combination, this article and the Google product knowledge panels would be helpful to review together, both for finding details and the best pricing.

However, the difficulty with Discover feeds is they refresh, so you almost don’t have the time to view all of these in one sitting.

2. “Must-have” WFH products – BuzzFeed

This is an interesting article by BuzzFeed for products that reviewers said are “must-haves.”

Who are these reviewers? We shall know soon.

The first product in the “Mentioned in this article” feature in Discover is a leather desk pad, but you wouldn’t know it from the title preview.

The other selected product is a laptop stand.

Both are around the same price range.

In the product knowledge panel for the desk pad, we have different color options available, as well as a size option.

Then the first retailer mentioned is Amazon. That’s also what’s called out in the “Mentioned” feature.

We can hypothesize that the retailer included in the “Mentioned in this article” feature in Discover is always the first one listed in the associated product knowledge panel.

It also says there are 7 stores available.

The other retailers listed are Sears and Amazon again.

In the previous example, we had a case where just two retailers were available for the word processor and three for the vase.

We can generalize that 3 retailers will be shown by default in these product knowledge panels, unless fewer are available. How they’re selected isn’t clear yet.

Below the retailers is an “About this product” description.

Then we have user reviews. We saw above that only one review has been recorded for this product, so that’s all that’s shown here.

The review doesn’t feel authentic, but that’s just me.

The other mentioned product was a laptop stand.

Similarly, it shows the store number, then the review average, and then color options.

The first retailer is Amazon.

The second retailers are Walmart and eBay. Again, prices here cover a wide range.

We also have a “More stores” button. I didn’t see that for the other product knowledge panels we reviewed, despite them having more stores available in all but one case.

Then we have the About this product description.

The “Top insights” section here is interesting. We haven’t had that yet.

It’s a YouTube video that seems to pull out key moments (similar to in a normal SERP video feature), but with a sentiment icon (thumbs up).

We also see sentiment indicators (thumbs up) pulled from the text reviews (User reviews) below the video.

There’s also a “Lower price” blue star, which says this is lower than the average for laptop stands. The symbol suggests an AI-based feature to me, but I’m not sure.

As for the user reviews, we see two excerpts shown from the same website (temu.com) and then a button to view more reviews.

Below the two “Mentioned” products in Discover is a button to “See more.” It’s not always available, but when it is, it takes the user to a Google SERP with organic product listings based on a “Shop” query plus a categorical entity.

Here we can see that query was general for “Shop Computer Accessories.” I believe these capitalized queries represent entities in Google’s Knowledge Vault, in this case a long-tail entity, but I’m not positive here given the word “Shop.”

This functionality is a feature I see often, where a topical refinement option from Google takes users to a related entity-based SERP, where the query is capitalized. (I spoke about this more in a historical context for another post on Google Search Options.)

As for the BuzzFeed article, we can see it starts off with an affiliate disclaimer.

I love how these disclaimers say things like “independently selected.” That’s kind of like when tech manufacturers say a product is “designed in California but made in China.”

But I digress …

Let’s look at the article (which I revisited on my computer) for additional insights.

The article has the laptop stand starting at $14.99 on Amazon. Google does say it typically starts at $15, but the lowest price shown is around $20.

However, the BuzzFeed link goes to an Amazon page where the price is $19.99, the same as Google!

The structure of this BuzzFeed article is also interesting.

It has considerably more text than the Esquire article, but nowhere is it implied the author used any of these products. (The photos were also taken from Amazon.)

The author also pulls in customer reviews from Amazon. So when the article says that “Reviewers” must-have these products, it just means people who left a review on Amazon.

The more I read these reviews, the more their details feel like generic interpretations of manufacturer descriptions.

Does anything here suggest a real person’s experience?

As for why these products got selected for “Mentioned in this article,” the next product after the laptop stand is the desk pad.

So again, the products were listed back-to-back in the article.

Based on two examples, it appears Google may select products for “Mentioned in this article” based on their proximity to one another in the article.

As for why it selects the two it does, I’m still not sure.

The article says the desk pad starts at $5.90, compared to a $19 starting range on Google.

But when I clicked the advertised price (see the image below), it took me to an Amazon page that’s $20.19, the same as Google again!

In other words, both of the BuzzFeed product prices were wrong and advertised lower than in reality.

Meanwhile, the BuzzFeed ad situation was intrusive:

Out of four products we’ve reviewed so far, only one was a better deal in the article.

Let’s continue with another example.

3. New samplers, grooveboxes and drum machines – MusicRadar

I don’t own any of this musical equipment or search for it — I’m also not sure what a groovebox is — but I do follow musical topics (like Pink Floyd above). Perhaps that’s why I’m seeing this.

The publisher here is MusicRadar.

The two products listed in the “Mentioned in this article” feature are a Yamaha … something (we’ll see in a minute) and a Polyend groovebox.

Both appear to come from specific musical retailers.

Again, one of the products mentioned here is also in the article’s featured image.

As for what that product is, it’s a Yamaha synthesizer used to produce electronic music.

The product knowledge panel says it’s available in 10+ stores and shows several color options.

Interestingly, we also see a “Nearby” button for the first time, presumably because it’s a high-priced item that we’d want to shop for in person.

The first retailer listed is Sweetwater, which is also the cheapest by .99 cents.

Sweetwater appears to be a specialty musical instrument retailer.

Here’s something interesting.

I searched on Google for synthesizers, and then I started typing in “sweet” after that, and Google inferred (based on the previous search’s context) that I wanted Sweetwater:

Just a reminder to never underestimate the power of personalization.

The next retailers listed are Guitar Center (another specialty retailer) and Walmart.

There’s an About this product section followed by a “Top insights” section.

We saw in the laptop stand example how Top insights were pulled from a YouTube video, but here they appear to be excerpts (with two highlighted) from website reviews.

We see additional highlights pulled out and categorized below those.

And below that, we have User reviews, including two excerpts shown with a button to view more. (We can likely assume two reviews will always be shown by default.)

Below the reviews, we have Discussions and forums.

This is a fascinating feature that we’ve seen A LOT of in Google’s normal search results, typically featuring Reddit and Quora. (I covered this in a YMYL context in another blog post.)

Here, we see Discussions and forums reference excerpts from Gearspace.

I had a theory that perhaps given the niche nature of these products (compared to a flower vase or laptop stand, for example), we’re seeing more specialty sources of information when possible.

This is arguably an application of E-E-A-T in a shopping context.

For a $20 laptop stand, we’d probably want more quantity of reviews to confirm if it’s good or not in a binary sense.

But for a synthesizer that cost several hundreds of dollars, we’d want more expert reviews detailing its specific advantages.

The second product mentioned was a Polyend groovebox. (I searched for a definition on Google and SGE explained a groovebox is like a drum machine used for loop-based electronic music.)

The first retailer mentioned is B&H Photo, which includes a rewards coupon, our first.

Then we have Amazon.

The third retailer is Sweetwater again.

We also have About this product and Top insights, only this time it’s pulling from a YouTube video.

Interestingly, the sentiment icons this time include a thumbs up and a thumbs down and are attributed to an article review (rather than a user review).

We also have that same publisher (eMastered) mentioned again for another article that mentions the product, here called “Appears on these lists.”

More than anything, we can see how Google is increasingly extracting key information from webpages or other media and consolidating it elsewhere.

Remember passage ranking?

This feels like that concept on steroids.

But I digress …

We also have User reviews.

And below that is Discussions and forums.

Here we see Reddit in both instances. (Interestingly, I’ve recently noticed TikTok video transcript excerpts in this feature for products, as well.)

For the other synthesizer, we also had just one source with excerpts. Here we have one Reddit result with excerpts and a link to another subreddit with no excerpts.

Now let’s take a look at the article itself.

First, we see the affiliate disclaimer, confirming our first three examples are all affiliate articles.

We also see an ad above the fold, as well as one on the bottom (loading).

The ad situation gets even more intrusive down the page:

Including with video ads:

Which follow you:

Looking at that screenshot above, how could we possibly read that page?

As for our theory about Google selecting products listed back-to-back, the Yamaha synthesizer was mentioned second and the groovebox was mentioned second to last.

So as far why products get selected, we have a theory about the first (shown in a featured image) but not the second.

I also don’t want to suggest that ads are always a problem or cause of the “Mentioned” feature showing for affiliate articles. In other examples I’ve seen, the articles had no ads and high-quality content reviews.

I hope to add more of these in the future. (Currently, I probably have about 20 examples, equating to around 100 screenshots in my phone!)

Summary of findings

After looking at our first three examples — which admittedly is a small sample size! — here are some initial takeaways:

• Google seems to select one of the “Mentioned in this article” products based on it appearing in the article’s featured image on Discover.
• In many cases, Google also seems to select products that are listed closely together.
• The seller referenced in the “Mentioned” feature is always the first one highlighted in the product knowledge panel.
• Google’s product knowledge panels will highlight three sellers by default (unless fewer are available).
• The articles were all affiliate articles with intrusive ads and no indication authors used these products.
• The prices in the articles often seem lower than what’s in Google’s product knowledge panels, but sometimes they’re inaccurate, with only one being a better deal.

We’ll add to this list of examples over time and adjust these findings accordingly, but before concluding, let’s consider the state of affiliate marketing websites and the implications of the “Mentioned in this article” feature.

The implications of “Mentioned in this article” for affiliate sites

A lot of folks in the affiliate marketing space whose sites were adversely impacted by Google’s third HCU were hoping the next big rankings updates would help recover their traffic.

Instead, likely given the unhelpful content classifiers in place (or signals anew), the latest March 2024 core update and spam updates seemed to further diminish the visibility of HCU-impacted sites. Some sites also received manual actions from Google’s webspam team.

At the same time, Reddit has enjoyed increasing visibility in search results, both ranking content organically as well as in SERP features like Discussions and forums (mentioned earlier).

One of the themes I see in the “SEO” subreddits on Reddit is a theory that Google Search is deliberately targeting affiliate sites.

Here’s an example from a recent post:

“From reading the comments i understand this only happened to niche/content sites, so Google seems to have a clear target here. Content sites get the most traffic as they cover a wide range of topics. I refuse to believe it’s about spam or expertise”

– Gkun09 on Reddit

Posts from the seo
community on Reddit

I do think many affiliate sites are being targeted in these rankings updates, but not because they’re affiliate sites …

It’s because of how users feel about them.

The Verge’s recent article about printers

A good example is The Verge’s latest article on printers.

Nilay Patel, a prominent voice at The Verge, recently wrote a satirical article about the best printer in 2024, making fun of Google and affiliate articles.

Note the article itself has an affiliate disclaimer.

The master irony, though, is that his article ranks well on Google Search because it’s helpful content, for what it is.

I saw Nilay talking about why he wrote the article in a podcast clip on TikTok.

He called out affiliate content directly.

But I was also curious if followers of The Verge on TikTok thought the same way, so I gathered their comments and put them into Google Gemini to summarize.

Here were the top two themes:

“1. Dominance of Ads and Affiliate Links:

• Many users complain that search results are flooded with ads, affiliate links, and sponsored content, making it difficult to find organic, relevant information.
• They feel Google prioritizes profit over user experience, pushing commercial results over genuine search results.

2. Decline in Search Quality and Relevance:

• Users note a significant decline in the quality and relevance of search results over the past few years.
• AI-generated content and SEO-driven articles are seen as low-quality and unhelpful, particularly for research purposes.
• Many express the need to use additional search terms or platforms like Reddit to find desired information.”

For context, here’s an illustrative example of a conversation between two TikTok users:

This gets at a core theme.

These affiliate articles aren’t seen as helpful by users, in general.

Yet the products the articles mention are still of interest.

That’s what’s intriguing about the “Mentioned in this article” feature.

It essentially uses the article’s context to identify relevant products for Discover users, but then cuts out the incentives to visit the articles.

Are the articles really that bad?

Is Google’s showing a product knowledge panel really better, given the preponderance for fake reviews (a-whole-nother topic of discussion)?

I guess the more frequently Google shows the “Mentioned in this article” feature, the more we can answer these questions.

Stay tuned

I have a lot more screenshots of examples to add in the coming days. As a result, we may have new findings on this topic, as well.

Until then, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing! 🙂