About Substack’s Discovery And Notes
And Medium
For most of 2025 and before, I was convinced Substack was great for discovery. Notes. Recommendations. The Substack app surfacing new writers. Momentum.
4 months into 2026, I’ve been going back through my own read counts on both platforms, looking at what articles are still getting reads 60, 90, 120 days after publishing.
And those numbers on Substack have little to do with Substack-internal discovery. Also, my Substack numbers do not nearly compare to my Medium numbers.
Changes
Substack Notes seemed to bring a big change to Substack. The “social media“ change… but in a good way (we hoped).
It did… and it didn’t.
Short posts, real engagement, writers recommending writers. A discovery engine. And for a while, it probably was, for people who were already on Substack and for newcomers.
But Substack discovery happens mostly inside Substack. Notes reaches people who already have the app. Recommendations push you to other newsletters’ subscriber lists. It’s circular. It’s closed.
Other forms of discovery aren’t closed. And they work better, at least for me.
Look at Medium here as well. Medium’s discovery happens a lot on Google. Internally too, of course, through boost, algorithm, and distribution, but also externally form search.
Substack Notes, and it’s internal discovery mechanisms aren’t as good as Medium’s, and externally, most Substackers ignore the search situation.
The numbers
I write articles on both platforms. Same topics, similar frequency. In 2025, I (really) started tracking reads at 30, 60, and 90 days for a set of articles on each side.
The Substack articles spike on the day an email blast goes out. Maybe 500–2000 opens for my list. A handful of web visits from search. Then it used to flatten, usually.
By day 30, most articles were getting single-digit reads per week. If any.
The Medium articles either start slower and build up over time, or they hit right away. Well… or they bomb entirely.
But the ones that work, they don’t flatten the same way the ones on Substack did.
Articles I published in January are still pulling consistent reads in September. Some of them more than they did in the first two weeks.
On rough average, Medium articles at 90 days were pulling about 3x-5x the weekly reads of comparable Substack articles. More for topics with clear search intent. Less for opinion pieces where there’s no obvious keyword.
That’s why, in mid 2025, I switched my Substack strategy to heavily focus on SEO. Instead of Substack-internal discovery.
And it paid off a lot.
Now my Substack articles get more search reads. In fact, search has become my #1 growth source for views and subscribers, including paid subscribers.
I barely use Notes anymore. I focus entirely on SEO.
Medium still wins for me though
I’ve been on Medium longer and my stories do well often. My old stories also still get read. So, right now, for me, Medium is still #1.
But Substack is catching up. With SEO. I’ve written about how to use Substack for SEO, and the strategy works. It’s slower.
I am building authority from zero, not inheriting it, because I use a custom domain on Substack and can’t ride Substack’s own high domain authority. Not ideal in the short term, but way better long-term, because the generated traffic belongs to me now, not to Substack.
I do the same on Medium. Custom domain. Traffic is mine.
Where Substack beats Medium
Substack wins on owned audience right now.
Every subscriber is an email address you control. Every open is a real person who chose to hear from you. Unless they change that, it is a deciding factor for Substack vs. Medium.
Substack also wins on newsletter format. If your writing is conversational, intimate, built for the inbox, Substack is the right home for it. The reading experience is better than Medium for that kind of work.
And for some niches, Substack discovery is working pretty well, I hear. Politics. Finance. Local journalism. These have active recommendation networks on the platform. Writers in those categories see real growth from Notes and Recommends.
Discovery != Discovery
Community-driven discovery and search-driven discovery are different. Both are options. Both can be done. They just operate on completely different timelines and for completely different readers.
I enjoy the SEO route more.
Substack Notes might send me 50 new readers today. They may or may not open any further issues. A Medium article on the right long-tail keyword can send me 20 readers a week for three years.
And good SEO on Substack can do the same.
If you’re publishing on Substack and nothing else, you’re betting everything on email and community. That can work. But you’re leaving a big chunk of search traffic on the table.
If you want to see what a dual-platform approach actually looks like in practice, I went deep on it in how I earn money on Substack in 2026.
Downsides
Medium’s paywall cuts reach. A lot of potential readers hit the paywall and leave. You’re not building a free audience the same way Substack lets you. But if you paywall everything on Substack too, it’s not better.
The Medium Partner Program earnings are still unpredictable. I know. I’ve had $30 months, $300 months, and $3000 months on the same publishing frequency.
Search traffic helps, but it doesn’t make the income stable.
Medium’s ownership risk is also there. Ghost subscribers on Substack are a problem but at least you have the emails. On Medium, your “followers” are a number, not a list you can export. And the subscribers are hidden now.
So, Substack has some things going for it.
I use WriteStack* to track a bit more what’s performing on Substack.
The Bottom Line
Substack discovery is there. It just doesn’t compound the way search does (for me).
If I could only pick one platform for a new writer asking about discovery, I’d still use Medium right now. Or at least, Substack with proper SEO.
I wouldn’t rely on the inbox and Substack-internal discovery.
You can read more about which platform pays better and how to rank your Substack on Google if you want to work both angles.
*this is an affiliate or SparkLoop* partner link. I may earn a commission.
Burk, why do your articles on Substack always end up at the bottom of the Subscriptions tab? They show as new, but this one is marked as Apr 25 and because of that, far below other newer ones.