Meaning & use
discoverability
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountablecomputing
How easy it is for people to find or come across something, such as a website, app, song or feature.
Grammar: Uncountable: improve discoverability, not a discoverability.
Patterns
- the discoverability of something
- improve discoverability
The app's discoverability improved once it appeared in the store's top charts.
Poor discoverability means many users never find the best features.
Streaming services are working on the discoverability of new artists.
noununcountablelegal
In law, the quality of being open to disclosure so that evidence or documents can be found and used by the other side in a case.
Grammar: Uncountable: the discoverability of an email.
Patterns
- the discoverability of something
The lawyers argued about the discoverability of the internal emails.
Discoverability rules decide which records must be handed over.
The judge ruled on the discoverability of the company's text messages.
Common combinations
- improve discoverability
- Better tags will improve discoverability of your videos.
- poor discoverability
- Poor discoverability keeps good books out of readers' hands.
- search discoverability
- Search discoverability depends on clear titles.
- content discoverability
- Editors focus on content discoverability to grow their audience.
- increase discoverability
- Subtitles can increase discoverability for foreign films.
Synonyms and how they differ
- findability
- Findability is almost identical in meaning, but is more common in web design and library science.
- visibility
- Visibility is wider and can mean being seen at all, whereas discoverability is about being found by someone looking.
- accessibility
- Accessibility usually means being usable by everyone, including people with disabilities, which is a different idea.
Word family
Commonly confused: discoverability or searchability?
discoverability vs searchability
Searchability is how easily content can be searched once you are looking at it, while discoverability is whether you encounter it at all.
Practice
A developer says the app has poor discoverability. What does she mean?
Choose one answer.
Discoverability is about how easily something is found. Crashing or cost are other problems and are not what the word measures.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “discoverability”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.