Has Google changed how it counts Direct vs Discovery searches?

[Annika Neudecker]

We track our GBP insights for our locations every month to watch growth and trends over time. I pulled my September data this morning and found a very curious change in the reported searches. It appears that the reported Direct searches increased significantly (about +1 mil) while Discovery searches fell by nearly exactly the same amount. This makes me wonder if Google has switched up how it counts Direct and Discovery searches for GBP listings. We haven't made any changes to our listings which would prompt a big change in how they're being found.

Has anyone else noticed this change in their own listings? Any blog posts or announcements reporting this shift that I'm missing?

Snippet of our data for the past few months - blue is total searches, grey is discovery, orange is direct

 

[keyserholiday]

Have you seen any spikes in views like this thread?

 

[Annika Neudecker]

Have you seen any spikes in views like this thread?

For Maps views, yes. Our maps views across all listings spiked up +3 mil in September. Search views are exactly in line with expectations. Spot checking a few locations, it seems like this wasn't across the board. Most have volumes and graphs that seem perfectly ordinary where others definitely have that mid-month spike, somewhere around Sept 17-20th. We're in the self-storage industry rather than car dealerships.

 

[Joey Abna]

I have some restraunts that have this same pattern. The flippening of Discovery with Direct searches with little change in engagement. I will be curious about the search queries when they appear in the reporting.