How much direct traffic is really direct?
-
Does anyone else think that a large chunk of traffic labelled as "Direct" in your analytics isn't direct at all. When you analyse traffic trends it seems that a large percentage could just be browsers with their referring URL hidden so it only appears direct. Here's the evidence:
-
When we've been affected by major search algorithm changes, we've seen big changes in direct traffic as well as organic, but not in referral traffic.
-
If direct traffic is just bookmarks, typed-in URLs, and people clicking through from emails why is direct traffic 85% new visitors? We don't do any offline advertising, so you'd expect genuine direct traffic to be returning visitors -- either our brand loyalists or subscribers to our email newsletters.
-
If you segment direct traffic into new and returning visitors and look at a major algo update as discussed in 1), you find all the drop in direct traffic is from New Direct visitors, with no drop at all in Returning Direct visitors.
Can anyone explain who these New, Direct visitors are if not simply mislabelled new, search visitors. Cookie deletion can't be the problem (ie: they can't be Returning, Direct really) because the traffic doesn't behave like returning, direct (that is, it varies too much).
I'd be really interest to hear theories, and whether anyone has any figures on the extent of HTTP referrer blocking.
-
-
We get a lot of brand searches, but even if they come from unrecognised search engines you'd expect them to be registered as referrals not direct, wouldn't you?
-
I have thought the same thing before but, then again it could be true. Do you have high number of searches for your business name? I've also thought that maybe Google can't track it because its coming from another search engine. I also get a pretty high number of not provided keyword searches. Hopefully someone will answer this question for the both of us!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
How to protect the site from fake traffic
How to protect the site from fake traffic On Google Analytic there are no visits, but on the front of the site there are 6000 jetpack wordpress statistique https://arabtechnologie.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | BELGHOUL0 -
Can Segment capture organic traffic? If so is it more reliable than Google Analytics?
Hi mozzers, We just learned that our standard GA hasn't been as reliable as we hoped so and we are trying to find other ways to track organic sessions. Which solution would you consider? Is Segment one of them? If so, is it more reliable than Google Analytics? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Ty19861 -
Has anyone else seen a large increase in Direct Traffic in Analytics since August 21 2017?
I work at an agency that has Google Analytics to many different sites. About half of them have seen a huge increase in their "Direct" traffic since August 21. Given the cross section of sites I am viewing, I don't think this issue just effects our clients. So has anyone else seen this issue? Any ideas on how to correct/filter?
Reporting & Analytics | | Rogersthe3rd1 -
Main Website Redirects to Mobile Website, Mobile Website counts this as direct traffic, is there a way to tell what the source/medium is?
Hello, The situation is that someone is arriving on my main website https://www.example.com and being redirected to http://m.example.com. When this happens my analytics says that the traffic is all direct coming to my mobile site. However, I know people clicking on my google cpc, and some google organic users are hitting the main website and being redirected. Before we didn't have as good of a redirect on our main website so I could tell organic and cpc traffic coming in, now my main website has a huge drop in these categories because they are redirecting to mobile but I can't tell on my mobile how much traffic from each is going to the mobile site. Is there a way to fix this? Is it because my main website is https:// and mobile is a http:// (as I know that sometimes makes traffic direct) or is it a bigger problem that can't be resolved? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | oxfordseminars0 -
Analytics not tracking traffic from Old Domain Redirect
We've recently 301 redirected one of our client's domains to their new website and the strange thing is, we aren't seeing an increase in traffic in analytics. You would expect the traffic to increase roughly by the traffic volume from the old domain. There were a few hundred redirects and we tested a large sample and the redirects have been implemented properly. Is there something that we did incorrectly in our implementation of the domain redirect? Or is there something else that we need to do in Analytics to properly track those redirects?
Reporting & Analytics | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Domain redirect for direct mail (source) tracking in Analytics?
We have a client that would like to do some direct mail marketing and the plan is to use a short/simple domain in the marketing materials, which redirects to the main site domain. By default this would show as a referral traffic source in Analytics, right? So any traffic that came through that redirect would be attributed to "shortdomain.com / referral"? Meaning I wouldn't need to do any sort of customized, advanced tracking set up to track conversions that I've already set up (ecomm and goals) and attribute them to this new source? Just double checking that I'm not overlooking something. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | VTDesignWorks0 -
Loss of Google referral traffic after server move / CMS move
I have a client that changed from MoveableType to Wordpress. He also changed from a dedicated server to WP Engine. He may have blocked search engines for a week or two, so his organic traffic is down but only by 25%. He's 301 redirecting all of the old pages. The mystery is that his referral traffic from Google is down 90%. It's a popular blog, so that's thousands. It's been going on a month now. Anyone seen this before?
Reporting & Analytics | | Hyper-Dog0 -
GA stopped tracking traffic, suddenly, why¿? :-/
2 days ago GA stopped receiving data. It only stopped for one account of all my projects. At this moment there are 5 persons navigating the site and these days there where numerous visitors as they contacted the support team thru the site. GA says that it's receiving the code, hw, I checked it twice. The tracking code is located below the footer, in the body. It was there for few years.... I also checked if there is some js conflict, negative. Is there something that could make the tracking to stop? Does anybody experienced similar problems¿? Should I be worried...¿? (and with SEOmoz server with issues not sure when will see new results.......) EDIT: In Web Master Tools I see results for indexing, with yesterday date, so I assume that the site crawling is ok and must be GA issue.
Reporting & Analytics | | MilosMilcom0