Track Google Discover traffic in Google Analytics

Google Discover is a personalized content feed within the Google app. It reaches more than 800 million active users every month and therefore offers enormous potential for website operators. By optimizing your content for Google Discover, you can increase the reach of your website and attract new customers at the same time. However, in order to exploit the full potential of Discover, the traffic must be tracked in a targeted manner. We will show you how to do this with Google Analytics 4 below.

In the Discover content feed, users are shown customized content based on their individual interests. These interests are determined by an algorithm based on Google search queries, app activity and previous location information. The feed is updated automatically and displays relevant news, blog articles and videos without the need to actively search for them. Users can further personalise the feed by marking content as ‘interesting’ or indicating that they want to see less of a particular topic.

A report for Discover traffic is available in the Google Search Console (GSC). As the GSC is not a tracking tool, the report only provides limited usable data. Google Discover traffic is often not recorded at all or pages are not displayed due to low click numbers. There are no such limitations with Google Analytics. You can use the tool to track traffic precisely and thus build target groups, analyse user behaviour and track conversions.

Tracking Google Discover traffic in GA4 therefore offers much more than just a general traffic overview. With a targeted analysis of user interests, you can make well-founded decisions on content optimization. This tells you which content particularly appeals to your target group and you can build on this to sustainably increase reach and interaction

Google Analytics summarises all types of Google referrers in the source ‘google’. Without further settings, it is therefore not possible to determine how many of these page views originate from Discover.

The referrer URLs of Discover and Google Search are very different. Discover, for example, can be recognised by the referrer google.android.googlequicksearchbox and google.android.googlequicksearchbox/. However, when Analytics processes the data to create reports, these referrers are overwritten and assigned to the source ‘Google’. However, it is possible to bypass this assignment and track the Discover traffic precisely in Google Analytics.

In Google Analytics 4, you can use event parameters to track traffic originating from Google Discover. We will show you how to do this step by step:

GA4 collects the event parameter ‘page_referrer’ with the page_view event. This parameter makes it possible to identify all types of referrers. The event parameter is not displayed as a dimension by default. However, by creating a custom dimension with the ‘page_referrer’ parameter, you can view the values collected by the parameter.

Create the custom dimension as follows:

If you create a new report with the custom dimension ‘Page Referrer’, you should see after one or two days at the latest that the Discover traffic comes from com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox or android-app://com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox. To make this clearer, you can rename the value of the event parameter ‘page_referrer’ to Google Discover if it contains com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox. This is done under Administration > Events > Change events > Create.

As data is collected over time, you can view the traffic from Google Discover in your Traffic Acquisition Report. To display the Discover traffic in the report, you need to add the newly created dimension ‘Page Referrer’ as a secondary dimension. To do this, enter ‘Discover’ in the table filter and press Enter. You will then receive a report showing the Discover traffic from the Discovery adverts and organic search results.

Google Discover offers enormous potential to increase the reach of your website and attract new customers. To utilise this traffic effectively, precise tracking in Google Analytics 4 is essential. While Google Search Console only provides limited data, GA4 allows you to analyse Discover traffic in detail through custom dimensions and event parameters. By setting it up correctly, you can accurately track traffic and gain valuable insights into the performance of your content.

Take advantage of the possibilities that Google Discover offers for your content and use targeted tracking with Google Analytics 4 to optimally capture performance and user interests. projx supports you in setting up and optimising your analytics strategy so that you can achieve your marketing goals efficiently. Contact us at info@projx.de for an individual consultation and find out how you can utilise the full potential of Google Discover for your company. We also offer regular webinars for google discover.

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