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A bit old, but a good read for website owners! 
Some highlight points
What is googleapis? Introducing Google cards
Traffic from the referral source “googleapis” increased 1200% during 2017, and is the quickest growing referral source in what can broadly be categorized as a group of “other” Google traffic, or all non-search traffic, to our network.
What is googleapi.com and where is the traffic coming from exactly? The referral domain indicates someone has found the content through Google cards that appear as suggested articles in the Google app. Googleapis also show referrals coming in from Google’s suggested articles in the Google Chrome app, which is similar to but separate from the Google app.
- This traffic almost entirely comes from mobile Android users, and while the Google iOS app has cards, they don’t appear to track as googleapi referrals in the same way. While content discovery controlled by Google leaves little room for control on the side of the publisher, there are some things to note.
Clearly, Google has invested in not only content discovery as a concept, but has prioritized it as part of their design in software and in their hardware strategy (see: homescreens on Google Pixels). Connecting their users to information that matters to them through content discovery benefits both Google as a company, and hopefully the companies that create the content. Unlike Facebook, this alignment doesn’t rely on likes or shares of fellow users; it simply relies on people choosing over time what they want to pay attention to while on their phone.