A business owner opens Google Analytics and sees how many visits came from Google Search this month. Search Console, for the same month, shows a different number of clicks. Which one is right? On 12 November 2026 Google published a documentation page that answers exactly that. It explains how to recognise a visit from Google in an analytics tool or a server log, and why the two tools almost never agree.
The page applies to any website, in any country and language. Anyone paying for SEO, or checking whether Google's November core update hurt their traffic, needs to read these numbers correctly first.
Google sends only its own hostname
Identification rests on one field the browser sends with each request: the referrer, which tells your site where the visitor came from. Google Search uses a referrer policy that passes only the scheme and host, with no path and no query string. Your server log will never show what the visitor searched for. For queries, Google points to the Performance report in Search Console.
These are the values the page lists:
| Where the visit came from | Referrer value |
|---|---|
| Google Search in a browser | https://www.google.com/ or a local Google domain such as https://www.google.co.uk/ |
| Google app on Android | android-app://com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox/https/www.google.com when the link opens in a browser tab, or https://www.google.com/ |
| Google app on iOS | https://www.google.com/ or a local Google domain |
Discover has no value of its own. A Discover visit carries the value of the surface where the person saw the feed, either the Google app or Search on the web. Google Images and other services on the same origins send the same values, so they are counted together. The page lists no separate value for AI answers in Search. In an earlier update Google said clicks from AI Mode are included in the Search Console Performance totals.
Visits that land as "direct"
Sometimes the referrer arrives empty and the visit is recorded as direct traffic. Google lists the causes: private browsing, anti-fingerprinting protections, opening a result in a new tab in some browsers, moving from a native mobile widget to a browser, and privacy extensions or strict settings.
Most analytics tools classify the values above as organic Google search by default. If your Google visits show up as referral or direct instead, Google suggests checking custom channel rules, referral exclusions and filters. If you count from server logs, count only requests for landing pages: images, stylesheets and scripts loaded by a page carry your own page URL as the referrer, not Google.
Why Search Console usually shows more
Google treats the gap between the tools as expected and explains where it comes from. Search Console counts the click the moment it happens. Analytics counts only after the destination page loads and its tag runs. Someone who closes the tab first, or whose ad blocker also blocks the measurement tag, is counted on one side only.
Redirects cause more of it. A client-side or meta-refresh redirect replaces the referrer with your own URL. A redirect that drops query parameters can drop gclid, the parameter that marks an ad click. A stricter Referrer-Policy set on the redirect can remove the source entirely.
The last point matters for anyone who also advertises. Search Console reports only organic clicks and leaves out Google Ads. Analytics, depending on its setup, may lump ad traffic in with organic. Compare the two without separating them and analytics will appear to show more free search traffic than you really get.
A checklist for whoever runs your site
For a business in Israel that pays an agency or a freelancer for SEO, the page works as a checklist to hand over. Ask whoever runs your site to confirm that the values in the table land in the organic search channel, that no referral exclusion moves Google into referrals, and that redirects on the site keep the visit's source. If Google traffic looks healthy and enquiries still don't come in, the problem is probably the page itself, and it is worth working through why a website brings no leads.