Google Discover is the “feed” of stories that appears when you open a new tab in Chrome on mobile. Google suggests a curated list of articles based on your browsing history and other factors. It’s also a separate tab within the Google Search App and appears below the search bar on the main page of the app. Our team's findings indicate that Google Search Console also denotes some organic search views to publisher sites as Google Discover referred.
Beginning in March of 2023, Chartbeat uses knowledge of a page's referrer, browser, and operating system data that we can detect on our backend to approximate which traffic Google defines as coming from Google Discover versus other Google Search sources.
This referrer will initially only be available in the Real-time Dashboard, with its arrival to the Historical dashboard and Advanced Queries soon to follow. In Historical and Advanced Queries, Google Discover referred traffic data will be available starting from the date that the new referrer is enabled in Chartbeat— it will not retroactively apply to traffic data from previous days.
Customers with Discover traffic should expect the Google Search referrer to show lower than previous traffic results upon the release of this new referrer, as traffic now categorized as Google Discover in Chartbeat has previously been grouped under the Google Search referrer.
FAQ
Why is my Google Analytics data different from Chartbeat’s Google Discover data?
Google Analytics does not accurately measure Google Discover data; it doesn’t fully differentiate between Google Discover and Google Search. According to Google, only Google Search Console shows the “true” Google Discover traffic numbers. Chartbeat’s Google Discover data will most closely correspond to the data in Google Search Console, not Google Analytics.