Google detecting Appium clicks

We’re building an app that runs automated tests using Appium on an Android emulator. Part of what we’re testing involves opening Google Chrome and clicking on links to some of our business pages.

The issue we’re running into is that when these clicks happen through automation, they don’t show up in our analytics. It looks like Google is somehow detecting that the clicks aren’t from real users and filtering them out.

We’ve tried digging into the network traffic to compare what happens during a manual click vs. an automated one, but we haven’t been able to spot any clear differences so far. Also click from appium like .click() .tap() but none seems to do the trick.

Has anyone dealt with something like this before? Is there a way to make these automated clicks more “real” in the eyes of Google, or is this one of those things where even if we find a workaround, it’ll probably break again soon?

Would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Google Analytics automatically excludes “bot” traffic, and I think that’s what you are seeing here. You will have to change the settings on Google Analytics so that it records bot traffic. Probably in a custom “include” filter. More here: