Google publishes official guidance for identifying Search referral traffic

NEW · Severity Normal. On November 12, Google Search Central added documentation explaining how site owners can identify traffic originating from Google Search using HTTP Referer headers. This is a measurement/documentation change, not a confirmed ranking algorithm change. What changed: a dedicated official guide for identifying Google Search visits in analytics and server logs. Who it affects: SEO teams, web analytics engineers, site owners and publishers. Action: review referral parsing and attribution rules against the new guidance, especially for custom analytics pipelines. Deadline: none announced.