Big jump in Google referrals from root with no search string

[freejung]

I just noticed this in the past couple of days. I'm seeing a big spike in Google traffic from /, showing up in GA under "referring sites" and a corresponding drop in traffic from Google on the "search engine" tab.

Anybody else see this? Is Google messing around with referral strings (again)?

[jimbeetle]

Recent thread here [webmasterworld.com].

[tedster]

In a nutshell, here's a quote from that thread:

networkliquidators: If a visitor finds your site from anything other than click on a direct link to a content page on a Google organic result on a google.com like home page, queries are not passed to organic traffic but are counted as a referral. Examples of Google referrals:

Images - Google Groups - Google Blogs - Google Shopping - Google Directory - Google News - Google RSS Feeds