It seems like Google Analytics is now showing some of Google Discover traffic, likely from the Google News Showcase. If you check your acquisition, source and medium traffic, you may see [newsshowcase / discover] in the list.
Vishal Marathe was the first to spot this and post about it on Twitter, from what I can tell:
@VorticonCmdr @glenngabe Coming across this source/medium traffic from last few days for a publisher site. Have you seen this before? pic.twitter.com/oaUQhm3C0m
— Vishal Marathe (@VishMarathe411) August 4, 2021
Valentin Pletzer and Glenn Gabe dug in and discovered this was likely coming from the Google News Showcase product. Valentin wrote "Looks like Google News showcase does attach utm-parameters to the URLs." Glenn Gabe added "Yep, I'm seeing that too starting on Thursday 7/29. And when you dimension by country, it's from countries running Google News Showcase."
Great catch Vishal. Yep, I'm seeing that too starting on Thursday 7/29. And when you dimension by country, it's from countries running Google News Showcase. pic.twitter.com/hluBNmUT7q
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 4, 2021
It also can show up in your real time view in GA:
Hello @rustybrick @glenngabe @lilyraynyc , In GA real-time I'm noticing a new source 'Discover' starting from today. And it going under the traffic source 'Other'. Is this a new one. Is Google splitting up the Discover traffic from the Organic. pic.twitter.com/iHSUnNrfLp
— Dinesh Kumar (@dineshrockie) August 4, 2021
This is a nice addition but it does not yet show all Google Discover traffic yet, I don't think.
But maybe?
a colleague of mine just made me aware that even non-showcase cards get tagged with ?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=discover&utm_campaign&utm_content cc @rustybrick
— Valentin Pletzer (@VorticonCmdr) August 4, 2021
e.g. non news showcase https://t.co/Kf7J9Nxipq pic.twitter.com/hVYS3qcyrl
— Valentin Pletzer (@VorticonCmdr) August 4, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: This might be a bug or not working as expected - but it seems the GA team is working on bringing us this Discover and/or News Showcase data:
I don't have the full insight into this change, but I think the idea at the moment is to pull this back and make sure it's less confusing first. Overall I think you'll like it, but let's give the team some time to figure out the details & plans :).
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 5, 2021
We've been looking into it but don't have any details just yet.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 5, 2021
