SEO professional Max Prin just surprised everyone with a tweet showing that clicks from the Google Home app show up as direct traffic in Google Analytics. For instance, if you ask your Google Home device a question, it gets that information from a website – almost certainly one that’s in Google’s index.

In the Discover tab of the Google Home app on Android and iOS devices, there’s a history of recent queries and links to the sites that Google Home used to answer your questions. Clicking on these links will take you to the site. It would be reasonable to assume that this would be counted as organic traffic, since the site was found via a Google search. However, as the screenshot which accompanied Prin’s tweet shows, it’s being counted as direct traffic.

 

Direct traffic is relatively rare, at least compared to organic traffic. How often do you manually type in a site’s complete URL? Probably less often than you just type a search term into Google. This may change as Google fine tunes their algorithm, but at least for now, all Google Home traffic is being counted as direct traffic.

What does this mean for SEO professionals? It means that we all need to keep a closer eye on our analytics. If you see an increase in direct traffic, it could be a sign that more people are finding your content through Google Home devices.

Category Search Engine Marketing