Google Web Stories now has an official plugin for WordPress. What's behind it? How do Web Stories work? And above all: Is the format even worthwhile for your site?

The excitement is great, the promises even greater: Google Web Stories will now be more easily accessible for internet users. With a new plugin for WordPress, Google wants to make its Web Stories available to a wider audience.

In theory, all WordPress users can create their own Web Stories without any programming knowledge and benefit from the advantages of the format: better reach, higher engagement rates, more traffic. But what exactly are Google Web Stories?

Stories on the net: a success story

Many people are already familiar with the story format from various social networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and WhatsApp. As short, visual content, they attract more attention and higher engagement rates, especially among mobile users. Users on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp share around 500 million stories every day.

The recipe for success is quite simple: stories offer information in an easily digestible form and are simple and intuitive to use with a swipe. For content creators and companies, in turn, they offer an interactive visual format to communicate with their followers. It is therefore not surprising that Google is now also expanding its Web Stories.

Google Web Stories: The advantages

Google describes the format as follows:

"A Web Story is a visual storytelling format in Google search results that takes the user to a full-screen view where they can view the elements in sequence. Web Stories can also appear in Google Images, Discover and the Google App."

So you get a preview or even the whole story in a new form directly in the search results, in snack format.

Since this summer, Google Web Stories have been appearing to users in the form of slideshows with short text on the mobile Google search in Google Chrome. If a user is interested, all they have to do is click on the preview displayed and they will be taken directly to the story.

This is a particularly immersive user experience and in turn offers content creators new opportunities to make their content interesting for users - and thus improve the user experience.

Longevity and SEO

Google has not simply copied the story format from social media. In addition to an interactive, visual format, Google Web Stories also offer users many other advantages that have a direct impact on SEO and therefore also on traffic and conversion rates.

In contrast to the usually short-lived social media stories, Google Web Stories do not disappear after a certain period of time, but remain in the search results. Users also do not have to use a specific app to see the stories. They are displayed organically in the mobile search results in Google Chrome.

In times when content creators are struggling to bring mobile users back from the apps to their websites in the browsers, Google Web Stories are much more valuable because they play directly in the browser.

The Google format therefore offers a significantly higher reach than social media stories. You can reach significantly more users via Google search than via an Instagram story, for example, and improve your visibility more quickly at the same time.

Another important difference to Instagram & Co: Google Web Stories is based on the open source approach of the AMP initiative.

Open source of AMP Stories allows open access

AMP is a leaner programming format derived from HTML especially for mobile devices. Google introduced AMP in 2015. AMP websites load much faster on mobile devices, even with low bandwidth.

Logically, this also applies to AMP Stories, or Google Web Stories. This should provide users with easy access to information. Google's stories allow users to get a first impression of web content before they decide to take a closer look at it.

For websites, on the other hand, Google Web Stories are a new way to better convey their content, improve their search engine visibility and thus increase traffic. It is also possible to include an affiliate link in Google Web Stories. This format also opens up new revenue opportunities.

First beta testers with positive interim results

Some of the first beta testers to work with Google Web Stories are major US media houses such as CNN, the Washington Post and online magazines such as Mashable and Wired. They show what is possible with the format. Wired magazine, for example, has published a story entitled Space Photos of the Week.

In Google Web Stories, users see a slideshow that shows the respective space photos with a short info text. This is an elegant and very user-friendly way of directing users to image galleries.

However, longer formats with up to 30 elements are also possible. A Google Web Story from the "San Francisco Chronicle", for example, tells the story of a ballet theater and its dancers. This story combines short texts, images, archive photos and videos, which is very visually appealing. For users of mobile devices with small screens in particular, it is much more convenient to absorb longer content in this form in chunks than via long text formats.

The possibilities for presenting content visually via Stories are therefore very diverse. The feedback from beta users is correspondingly positive. Greg Manifold, Design Director at the "Washington Post" says:

"Web stories allow us to highlight our quality journalism when there are multiple elements we want to bring together. Combining reporting, photography, videos and motion graphics gives readers a more visual entry point when they search for our coverage."

But until now, there has been a big catch for the integration of Google Web Stories: they are quite complex to program.

This may not be a problem for large publishing houses. But for the average content creator, this has been an obstacle until now. This is exactly what the new Web Stories WordPress plugin from Google could now change.

How Google Web Stories for WordPress work

For the first time, it offers a toolkit for integrating Google Web Stories into WordPress. The plugin has been available since this summer. Initially, however, it was only available in a beta version. Google has now announced that the beta phase has ended. The plugin can now be installed directly in WordPress.

Once installed, it appears in the dashboard and offers WordPress users various templates with which they can build their own Google Web Stories using an editor.

Google has defined a few guidelines for its Web Stories that content creators must adhere to when creating them:

• Completeness: The web story must be complete, tell the whole story and must not be too commercial.
• Affiliate programs: If you use affiliate links in your stories, Google recommends using only one affiliate link per story.
• Length of the web story: The stories must be between a minimum of five and a maximum of 30 pages long; the aim should be ten to 20 pages.
• Title length: The title should be as short as possible, Google recommends less than 40 characters.
• Text: The text per page should also be short (less than 200 characters per page). Only one topic should be discussed on each page.
• Video: Videos should ideally be less than 15 seconds long per page, with a maximum of 60 seconds per page. Google also recommends including subtitles where possible.

The templates in the plugin are graphically very high quality, so they are also visually appealing. If you select one of the templates, you can customize it using an editor. Individual slides can be copied, deleted or edited.

When editing, text or geometric shapes can be inserted, for example. All elements can then be edited in more detail. For example, you can customize the text type, size or color as well as the graphic elements.

New slides can also be inserted. An empty slide appears first. You can then fill this with images, videos or graphics from your own WordPress media library and edit it further using the editor. However, in order for the stories to appear in connection with a specific article in Google Search, they must be linked together in WordPress. This is done in five steps:

1. You create a post in WordPress.
2. You can build a Google Web Story with the plugin to match.
3. You publish the story via the Web Stories dashboard in WordPress.
4. You can now display the story link in the story preview.
5. This is then integrated into the desired WordPress post using a Gutenberg block element. The story block can be placed between the title and teaser text, for example. The Google Web Story link can then be embedded within the block.

Still not sure how to integrate a web story into a WordPress post? Then we recommend the following video tutorial:

Are Google Web Stories worthwhile?

As you can already see from this, the WordPress plugin is not yet very user-friendly to use. This is due to the fact that creating web stories is quite time-consuming because you have to configure each element individually. There is also no option, for example, to drag crisp quotes or headlines from the WordPress text into the corresponding slideshow or even have them dragged automatically.

It is also not guaranteed that Google will display a specific web story in the search results. So far, Google has also not placed Web Stories as prominently as video content in the search results. So is it worth the time and effort?

The answer, as so often, is: it depends. If the source text does not offer any high-quality visualization options, but only low-resolution photos, for example, the answer is more likely to be "no". This is because Google Web Stories prefers high-quality visual content for display.

However, if, for example, there is a text with appealing visual content - an elaborate recipe or a travel report with high-quality photos - the situation is different again. Here, a placement in Google Web Stories can significantly increase traffic to the website. A younger target group may also feel more attracted to the visual presentation form of the stories than an older target group. The younger target group has already been familiar with the story concept for years via social media.

A question of the medium - and the target group

Another factor is: Which device does the target group use to access the content? Since Google Web Stories are only displayed on mobile devices, it is not worth the effort for the stories if the target user group mainly uses the website on a desktop. However, this can also change. Given the efforts that Google has made around its Web Stories and the success of the format in social media, it is quite conceivable that Google will increase its Web Stories.

If web stories are anywhere near as successful as they are on social media, it will certainly not be long before programmers offer new tools for editing and creating web stories. WordPress in particular offers huge opportunities for this thanks to its large plugin marketplace - both for developers and website operators.

While Google Web Stories are certainly not suitable for every context, Google offers a new format for presenting content in a user-friendly way. If in doubt, you should simply try out Web Stories to see whether it is worth the effort for your own project.