Hyon Kim

Moving to icebox for now as this is less likely.

  In 2020 and prior months, google was top source, and sometime in February-March 2021,...

I looked through this time period, and there was not an obvious drop off point in the switching places between google and direct. For instance it did not appear tied...

There's also an email today about GA 4: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/?utm_campaign=2021-q4-gbl-all-gafree&utm_source=google-growth&utm_medium=email&utm_content=ga4-sot-ga4-setup-assistant-nonadv#/a42542568w72309185p0/admin/ga4-setup-assistant

The switch seems to have happened in mid-February 2021 

Situation remains the same in recent analytics view: 

Searching for some popular datasets, such as GSA federal real property, or GSA per diem, the GSA pages appear at top of search results, catalog.data.gov version not found until second...

Everyone on the team should have access to Google Search Console now for data.gov. There's a good DAP training on GSC at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuP0FAHOrz8&list=PLd9b-GuOJ3nEz1NYl66orgVZIu17laKba&index=48

The training points out parts of Google Search Console to check for things that might prevent Google indexing

The training also emphasized submitting a sitemap in Google Search Console.