16 Mar Google APIs Referral Traffic Disappeared – New Google Discover for News Publishers
Has your referral traffic from googleapis.com experienced a decline of 50% or more? You are not alone – News publishers and media websites are currently experiencing a significant drop in the googleapis.com source.
The reason? Google is moving to a new core update for the linking of data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics. More specifically, Google Discover data will progressively be exported to the Google Analytics enviroment.
Image source: Searchengineland.com
As stated by Google, the company will provide a “new experience” as far as data exported from Google Search Console to Google Analytics are concerned. Google’s message regarding the new update reads as follows:
«Updates to the Search Console and Google Analytics linked properties terms of service
We’re working on a new experience that combines Search Console and Google Analytics data to provide you with more useful data about your site. We are updating the linking integration between Search Console and Google Analytics to allow the export of data from your Google Analytics property to the linked Search Console property. We’ll notify when this new experience becomes available (probably in a few weeks).
Linking your Google Analytics property to your Search Console property enables data to flow between the products. Going forward, data shared from your Google Analytics property with your Search Console property will be subject to the Search Console terms of service. Search Console data shared with your Google Analytics property will continue to be subject to the Google Analytics terms of service.
If you’d like to disable the data flow between your linked Search Console and Google Analytics property, you can unlink your properties from each other in the property associations page.»
The steps ahead: News publishers must stay alert for a new report in their Google Analytics dashboard
Google will provide more relevant traffic data to our Google Analytics Dashboard from Google Search Console. What we have to do is to keep an eye on the Search Console of Google Analytics under the path Acquistion > All Traffic. I bet a new report will appear regarding Google Search Discover or Googleapis.com in our Google Analytics data.
Connect Google Analytics with Google Search Console Property
In order to see the data flowing from your Google Search Console to Google Analytics, you must connect the two properties.
Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and click the gear icon in the down left side. Then go to “Property” and click “Property Setting”.
Scroll down to you “Search Console”, click on “Adjust Search Console” button and then click “Add”. A window will popup leading to Google Search Console dashboard where you will have to choose which property you would like to associate with your Google Analytics.
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