"So I dug deeper into GA, and across all four sites I noticed a clear pattern. The spike in Google organic traffic is coming from desktop users on Windows with a screen size of 1280x720. Engagement metrics are terrible, like 2 seconds on site. It's not coming a from a specific country or just to the homepage. Traffic is spread out."
"Between October 7th and 8th, GA4 flagged an anomaly - a +336% spike in organic users. However, Search Console data stayed flat. The sessions looked real on the surface, but the OS mix and lack of GSC correlation suggest GA4 may be counting automated or misattributed traffic as google / organic. It's the biggest mismatch I've seen so far between the two systems."
Multiple e-commerce sites recorded sudden, significant spikes in organic traffic in Google Analytics 4 while Google Search Console showed no corresponding increase. The anomalies occur across different CMS and e-commerce platforms and appear concentrated in desktop Windows users with a 1280x720 screen size, exhibiting very low engagement (around two seconds). Traffic is geographically spread and affects various pages rather than only homepages. Platform analytics such as Shopify and BigCommerce also reflect similar spikes, indicating potential misattribution or automated/bot traffic being labeled as Google/organic in GA4, with recorded anomalies up to +336%.
Read at Search Engine Roundtable
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