• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 7, 2016

Experts said the use of content would explode this year in ways not seen in the past. I'm not sure they imagined the ability to post in an instant without the need to index the content before serving it up in query results on a search engine, similar to the way Facebook posts are done.

Companies continue to capitalize on the trend. First Facebook launched Instant Articles, giving publishers instant access and the ability to post and share text and images in Facebook.

Google jumped in with Google Posts, which provides something similar but gives the engine exclusive content in Google search query results.

On Monday, Facebook said it would add a WordPress plugin that makes it easier to generate and publish Instant Articles from WordPress. The social site worked with a small group of WordPress publishers to test the plugin as a way to adapt the Web content to the Instant Articles format.

When Instant Articles officially launches in April, publishers that use standard WordPress templates can use the plugin, without making modification.

Publishers can choose to use the templates or customize the layout. The open-source plugin recognizes the image found in the article and specifies the correct markup language to use, so photos, images and videos render properly. The photo expands to fill the screen when tapped and allows the reader to explore the article's context by simply tilting the phone.

Unlike Google Posts, where content appears exclusively in Google search query results, Instant Articles creates content specifically for Facebook, but every Instant Article either through WordPress or not has a corresponding mobile Web article that serves up in search results.

For Google, it's not about searchers searching to find exclusive content. It's about the content served in query results being exclusive to the search engine and not Bing, Yahoo, AOL, or any other sites. Exclusive content brings people back to search for information, whether on engines, publisher sites or Facebook.