Google announced will soon add a new line item for Google Images data in Google Analytics.
As a result, site owners may notice a drop in referral data perceived to be coming from Google.
That’s because traffic from image search will be reclassified as coming from ‘google images.’
So it’s important to note that the upcoming change will not lead to an actual drop in traffic from Google organic search.
Google Images data will appear in the same section that displays sources of referral traffic in the ‘Acquisition’ reports.
Previously, referral data from Google Images would be grouped together with all referral data from Google organic search.
Google will soon be able to isolate referral traffic data from image search results after making a change to Google Images referral URLs.
We reported on the change to referrer URLs last month.
Google mentioned that the change would open up the possibility of Google Images data being tracked in Analytics, but was short on details.
Now Google has revealed significantly more details, and also shared a few example screenshots.
“You’ll still see a line item for images.google.com in the ‘Referral’ report within Google Analytics. The referral report will continue to show these, and all other sources, as referrals.”
The change in how Google processes and reports on referral data from images will happen automatically for all accounts.
Site owners do not need to make any changes of their own in order for referral data from Google Images to be reported in Analytics.
However, those who have special filters or custom channel groupings set up will have to make updates in order to capture the new source parameter.
