Google Analytics shows traffic source to Mongo DB items as 'google / organic'

Question

One of our clients' sites uses Mongo DB for a section of the site. I've set up a regex filter to only show specific items from this database:

^/path1/path2/(.)/item/(.)$

The regex works as planned, however almost all the items are shown as having the source/medium as 'google / organic'. I'm fairly certain that Google can't index the DB, and even more certain that nobody is arriving directly at these items from the SERP as googling sections of each item's content comes up with nothing.

Does anybody have any idea why the traffic isn't shown as 'direct'?

Thanks

Answer 1

No idea why it is doing that, but use the Google Analytics Debugger (a Chrome Extension) that shows all of the information that is carried across to GA as a page loads.

This is a good article on GA debugging:

https://www.optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-google-analytics-debugging-troubleshooting/

If it were me, I would:

1) Install the plugin in Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-debugger/jnkmfdileelhofjcijamephohjechhna?hl=en

2) Turn on the developer console in Chrome and make sure the plugin is on

3) Paste one of the MongoDB URLs into Chrome and see what is passed in the console view

4) If the referrer is organic, you'll know (although I don't know why it would be) at least you can create a rule to filter out the spurious data.

Good luck!