undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Reporting & Analytics
  4. Why is my direct traffic down DRASTICALLY?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Why is my direct traffic down DRASTICALLY?

Reporting & Analytics
6
11
15.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • CassisGroup
    CassisGroup last edited by Aug 15, 2012, 4:21 PM

    I have been seeing a trend for a while that is intesifying.

    My direct traffic numbers are down A LOT. We are not down 50% to LY (in actual number not just percentage of traffic)

    I am trying to understand what could be the causes of this issue.

    I was considering simply bigger meaner competition, but I actually perform decently on my returning customers.  Also my performance on my brand keyword is more inline with my current trend so I would except these KW to do equally as bad if the actual brand/store was the issue.

    The more surprising even, is the fact that I can trace back the start of the trend exactly to the day. Overnight on Sept 22 LY direct traffic went down 30% (to LY) when it was trending UP 20-25%(to LY) before.

    Now, we did do a redesign of the website on May 2011 (4 months before the drop), and did change host Oct 2011 (a couple weeks after the start of the trend).

    Do you have any clue as to why this could be happening?

    Did GA start tracking direct traffic differently?
    Any thoughts?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Midleton
      Midleton last edited by Sep 17, 2014, 5:19 AM Sep 17, 2014, 5:19 AM

      Hi, I read you story with the direct traffic and I am experiencing the same problem. Have you found a solution?

      Thanks a lot !

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,2 years
      • CassisGroup
        CassisGroup @KeriMorgret last edited by Aug 18, 2012, 5:25 AM Aug 18, 2012, 5:25 AM

        Thanks! I am not sure how to look at ISPs of the visit. As far as email newslrtter, it was always done with mailchimp and tracked as such I believe (in campaigns).

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • CassisGroup
          CassisGroup @CassisGroup last edited by Aug 18, 2012, 5:23 AM Aug 18, 2012, 5:23 AM

          Well yes and no. It depens on the time frame. We have seen a drop of traffic all over recently (after the new panda/penguin updates) but at the time the switch occured (Sept 21 2011) and for several months after that, other traffic types were up which was consistent with what we were experiencing before the direct traffic drop. No switch in sources.

          Direct traffic starts dropping overnight sept 21st
          Referrals start dropping about Oct 18th
          Organic search is up and doing fine the entire time, but not showing a spike

          Now numbers are different, but the environment is different, which is why I choose to look back at last Fall to try to identify what happened.
          Hubby is looking into services we might have stopped using that might have been the cause..

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Vizergy
            Vizergy @CassisGroup last edited by Aug 16, 2012, 9:21 AM Aug 16, 2012, 9:21 AM

            While you have seen a drop in direct traffic, have you seen an increase in any other type of traffic?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • KeriMorgret
              KeriMorgret @EGOL last edited by Aug 15, 2012, 6:01 PM Aug 15, 2012, 6:01 PM

              In GA, look at the ISPs of the visits to see if one dropped off. We had a monitoring service that was actually triggering javascript that tweaked our direct numbers at a company once. Another thing that would affect it is doing email marketing and doing a tracking code so that suddenly the people who were direct (clicking on the link from the email) are now showing up as email referrals.

              CassisGroup 1 Reply Last reply Aug 18, 2012, 5:25 AM Reply Quote 0
              • EGOL
                EGOL last edited by Aug 15, 2012, 5:49 PM Aug 15, 2012, 5:49 PM

                What are these "direct" visitors doing on your site?

                Hitting a specific page?  Loading an image?  Robots crawling?  Robots checking pages for change?

                I am suspicious that these are not genuine human visits.

                KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply Aug 15, 2012, 6:01 PM Reply Quote 1
                • CassisGroup
                  CassisGroup @Vizergy last edited by Aug 15, 2012, 5:02 PM Aug 15, 2012, 5:02 PM

                  Hi, yes I mean actual direct traffic , not search related. No outside mktg was done so it cannot be that. Newsletter increased since then, so not that either.

                  Search on brand term is doing ok, but direct traffic is WAY down. 
                  I thought it could be the way google assigns direct now vs then.. But cant find any info to substantiate that. I would accept a double digit drop but the fact it happens overnight, just seems weird..

                  I am attaching the graph to show what I mean...

                  QCkRW

                  Vizergy CassisGroup 2 Replies Last reply Aug 18, 2012, 5:23 AM Reply Quote 0
                  • CassisGroup
                    CassisGroup @josh-riley last edited by Aug 15, 2012, 4:51 PM Aug 15, 2012, 4:51 PM

                    Hmm.. Well It is not that It is just surfacing, it is just that I am asking around only now 🙂

                    I have a sitemap and no problem for page indexation. The pages that are losing the most traffic are still indexed. no issue with that.
                    We also have no errors 400 or 500 recorded on GWT..

                    Given we apparently had a previous SEO dude use link exchange network on us (yeah I know nothing better than getting f**ked and paying for it)  we do fall in the penguin a bit and did fall a bit in the panda updates, but more in a slow manner, losing positions one at a time, rather than being dumped to page 5 or 40 overnight. Though I dont see what that would have to do with direct traffic loss??

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Vizergy
                      Vizergy last edited by Aug 15, 2012, 4:50 PM Aug 15, 2012, 4:50 PM

                      Your direct traffic meaning people typing your domain in to their address bar, correct?  Nothing to do with search, right?  Or do you mean traffic from Brand terms?  If it is direct traffic, did you stop any sort of non-search marketing around the same time that you didn't believe was producing any results e.g. email marketing, yellow page (or any other print) etc... if so, perhaps it was actually working and had people going directly to your website.  If you mean traffic from brand terms could you share your URL with us?

                      CassisGroup 1 Reply Last reply Aug 15, 2012, 5:02 PM Reply Quote 0
                      • josh-riley
                        josh-riley last edited by Aug 16, 2012, 10:55 AM Aug 15, 2012, 4:44 PM

                        )

                        CassisGroup 1 Reply Last reply Aug 15, 2012, 4:51 PM Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        1 out of 11
                        • First post
                          1/11
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        Browse Questions

                        Explore more categories

                        • Moz Tools

                          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                        • SEO Tactics

                          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                        • Community

                          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                        • Digital Marketing

                          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                        • Research & Trends

                          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                        • Support

                          Connect on product support and feature requests.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • inhouseninja

                          50% Drop in ALL Traffic Post June Update

                          traffic direct traffic analytics

                          We've had 50% drop in Google and Direct traffic post June Google update. Why would direct suddenly plummet as well? Could it be something with Google tag manager or our new cookie policy and cookie management system? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am a disabled person and trying to figure out what is going on with our site

                          Reporting & Analytics | Sep 8, 2022, 8:51 PM | inhouseninja
                          0
                        • lmoraes

                          Paid traffic or "Paid Search" is not showing in my Google Analytics

                          Hi, I have two campaigns running in Google Adwords or Google Ads now and I saw in Google Ads account that I had 5 clicks today (09/18/2018) but when I try to search for this clicks in my Google Analytics in ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Channels I don't find nothing about "Paid Search" or something like that. Bellow is a picture of my Google Analytics account to prove it. The accounts are linked and I can find the 2 campaigns in the Analytics. How can I interpret this picture? Where the paid traffic is showing? or not showing there? Thanks Leandro uvAtrsg

                          Reporting & Analytics | Sep 20, 2018, 2:54 AM | lmoraes
                          0
                        • jacob.young.cricut

                          Should Google Trends Match Organic Traffic to My Site?

                          When looking at Google Trends and my Organic Traffic (using GA) as percentages of their total yearly values I have a correlation of .47. This correlation doesn't seem right when you consider that Google Trends (which is showing relative search traffic data) should match up pretty strongly to your Organic Traffic. Any thoughts on what might be going on? Why isn't Google Trends correlating with Organic Traffic? Shouldn't they be pulling from the same data set? Thanks, Jacob

                          Reporting & Analytics | Jul 15, 2016, 5:21 PM | jacob.young.cricut
                          0
                        • Armen-SEO

                          Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics

                          if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com??  I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?

                          Reporting & Analytics | Sep 1, 2017, 4:49 PM | Armen-SEO
                          0
                        • EricFish

                          Help Blocking Crawlers. Huge Spike in "Direct Visits" with 96% Bounce Rate & Low Pages/Visit.

                          Hello, I'm hoping one of you search geniuses can help me. We have a successful client who started seeing a HUGE spike in direct visits as reported by Google Analytics. This traffic now represents approximately 70% of all website traffic. These "direct visits" have a bounce rate of 96%+ and only 1-2 pages/visit. This is skewing our analytics in a big way and rendering them pretty much useless. I suspect this is some sort of crawler activity but we have no access to the server log files to verify this or identify the culprit. The client's site is on a GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting account. The way I see it, there are a couple of possibilities.
                          1.) Our client's competitors are scraping the site on a regular basis to stay on top of site modifications, keyword emphasis, etc. It seems like whenever we make meaningful changes to the site, one of their competitors does a knock-off a few days later. Hmmm. 2.) Our client's competitors have this crawler hitting the site thousands of times a day to raise bounce rates and decrease the average time on site, which could like have an negative impact on SEO. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Google is going to reward sites with 90% bounce rates, 1-2 pages/visit and an 18 second average time on site. The bottom line is that we need to identify these bogus "direct visits" and find a way to block them. I've seen several WordPress plugins that claim to help with this but I certainly don't want to block valid crawlers, especially Google, from accessing the site. If someone out there could please weigh in on this and help us resolve the issue, I'd really appreciate it. Heck, I'll even name my third-born after you. Thanks for your help. Eric

                          Reporting & Analytics | Nov 5, 2015, 2:27 PM | EricFish
                          0
                        • RASEO

                          Referral Traffic from Google

                          Hello, I have a question about my company's new website. I've worked in SEO and studied Google Analytics results for a few years now but have never really come across something like this. I started in this position in January of this year and when I started breaking down the traffic sources in Google Analytics, I noticed most of the traffic was coming from Google.com as a referral source. I had never seen Google.com as a referral source before so I looked into options for what it could be. It was not a paid ad and our organic traffic was coming through in Analytics, Before I could get any further, our new website was launched (we switched CRM's to WordPress) and the referral traffic from google went from 2,966 in January of 2015 to 22 in February 2015. for more comparison, in February of 2014, the referral traffic from Google was 2,496. I expected a drop when we switched CRM's but we correctly re-directed all pages and created a new sitemap and our organic traffic is up since the switch (not enough to cover drop in referral). I thought at first this had to do with our Google sellers account being de-activated when we made the switch, but I quickly fixed this over a month ago and no change. I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen Google.com come through as a referral source in Google Analytics and if they we're able to figure out what it actually was. This would be a great help! Thank you, Alex

                          Reporting & Analytics | May 13, 2015, 11:14 AM | RASEO
                          1
                        • bozzie311

                          Will 301 redirects (Same Domain) show as referral traffic in Analytics?

                          For an eCommerce site we have 301'd legacy product pages to new product pages. Is all that traffic going to show up as referral traffic from our own domain in Google Analytics? If so, is there any way to preserve original source/medium info or will all the source/medium info be our own domain since there is a 301 redirect?

                          Reporting & Analytics | Oct 9, 2013, 2:29 PM | bozzie311
                          1
                        • BoomDialogue69

                          How can we view traffic from specific Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Reddit accounts in Google Analytics?

                          Dear Moz Community, This is a Google Analytics question. Using Google Analytics, we're trying to identify trends of visitors on a website from specific social media accounts, i.e: twitter.com/account-x facebook.com/account-x youtube.com/account-x reddit.com/r/account-x Ideally, we would like to be able to see the success rate for specific posts on these social media accounts, and how users engaged on the website after arriving from clicking a link on one of these accounts. Is this drill-down feature currently possible in Google Analytics? Many thanks for helping!

                          Reporting & Analytics | Aug 24, 2013, 2:27 AM | BoomDialogue69
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.