Has anyone noticed a dramatic drop in direct visits year over year in GA across multiple sites?
-
I monitor about 10 websites in GA. Many of these sites are in a stable phase of their lifecycle. I've noticed this year that direct visits on all my sites and even friends sites have dropped by 20-60%. Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year? In every instance I have no penalties, notices, anything and the drop is made up completely of "direct visits".
-
Did you guys ever make any sense out of this?
-
Did you ever come up with any explanation for this?
-
Yes I am seeing it too. Very strange. Overall my traffic on my 3 biggest sites is up, but direct visitis is down by about 30%.
-
@jp have you come up with any possible thoughts on what it could be? I am really surprised that there aren't more people talking about this. I'm at Mozcon right now. I would like to see if someone here could answer it.
-
We are experiencing a similar phenomenon.
-
I didn't ask for methods. I'm looking for an explanation of why a small sample of sites has seen huge drops in direct visits. Has anyone seen this issue?
-
This does not answer my question at all. I'm not a web novice.
I don't have your resume or a list of your websites.
So, I gave you solid data and shared a method of increasing your direct visits.
Sorry you didn't like it.
-
This does not answer my question at all. I'm not a web novice. I've been using analytics tools for years. I know for a fact there is something going on with the reporting and someone must have seen this. Here are the industries I have seen this on.
design blog
design downloads
custom t-shirts
If you look at the current month or any month this year vs the same timeframe last year you see drops anywhere from 30-60% in directs. It is not affecting my sales. It is causing goal conversions to climb arbitrarily. These sites are not all related. I have even checked against other friends with established websites and seen the same thing. If you have a site that is in a growth mode you won't notice it. I have a site that is up 250% in organic that doesn't appear the same way. Older properties with more stable traffic and less growth are showing it.
-
Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year?
I am only watching a few sites and we are working every day on those sites. Direct visits are climbing climbing on those sites. If you are continuously adding new content to these sites that engages the visitor your direct visits should be going up.
We are adding new content to these sites every week. And showing that content prominently on the homepage and across the site with server side includes. We also have programs that rotate the content on the homepage so visitors who visit multiple times in a week see different content on each visit. This freshness makes people come back to see what is new and that type of visit is usually a direct visit or a domain query, which I believe are enormously valuable for increasing your rankings.
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
-
Increase in Direct Traffic plus Bounce Rate rise for all traffic sources
Hello, I work for an agency and we have seen a big rise in bounce rate for 4 of our clients which happened on the exact same day. This rise on bounce rate is across all traffic sources. We are also seeing a big increase in direct traffic, starting on the same day. Is it possible for bot traffic to affect the bounce rate of all other traffic sources? We have ruled out double reporting in GA but can explain how the bounce rate has increased for all traffic sources. How is this linked to the rise in direct traffic (in some cases as high as 500%)? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | jenallen0 -
How can I redirect incoming links from an old version of my site ending in .ctlg and .ivnu?
My original site was published in 2001 using "version 2" software from Ivenue, the hosting company that I signed up with at that time. The site's structure was built in such a way that the primary category pages ended in the extension .ivnu. Product or item pages on the shopping cart side ended in the extension .ctlg. My site's name was and is [Lamplight Feather, Inc.](<a class="webkit-html-attribute-value webkit-html-external-link" href="http://www.tonyhill.net/" target="_blank">http://www.tonyhill.net/</a>). We built our business between 2001 and 2011 and by the last three years (2009 - 2011) of using their version two were averaging a million dollars per year in gross sales. We decided to "upgrade" to Ivenue's "version 3" in 2011 to take advantage of some more modern options and because their newer software created web pages ending in .html which we thought more desirable. We made the switch in late 2011. But it was a disaster. Traffic and sales dropped precipitously. For the past two years (2012-2013) our annual gross sales average dropped to $400,000. (Two other factors were involved beside losing the many incoming links and link juice we had built up over the years: Panda came in that fall and my little niche market (decorative feathers) was flooded with competitors.) However as I try to rebuild our traffic and business little by little, I am stumped as to how to redirect the many incoming links that went to our first site's .ivnu and .ctlg pages. I have constructed redirects for some of our current but changed .html pages like this and put them in the file cabinet and they work: For (example): http://www.tonyhill.net/feathers_c384589.html then But trying the same thing for (example) http://www.tonyhill.net/craftfeathers.ivnu still returns a 404. Is there something I am missing. Ivenue is useless in this matter by the way. Their "technicians" are no help. I plan to be migrating my site once again to a new hosting company and hope to solve this problem before then. Thanks for the attention, Tony Hill This is an example from Google Webmaster of the type of links that show up as 404's that I would like to redirect: | URL: | http://www.tonyhill.net/productCat96521.ctlg | | | Error details | Linked from | | <colgroup><col></colgroup>
Reporting & Analytics | | featherman
| http://www.tonyhill.net/productCat43986.ctlg |
| http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=21416&page=2 |
| http://www.cosplay.com/showthread.php?p=3832751 |
| http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=21416&page=2&highlight=fur |
| http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/puppeteers-resources-links.19330/page-2 |
| http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/how-do-you-like-my-puppets.18549/page-2 | | | | |0 -
SEOing a Site Before it is ready?
Hi Guys I have a site currently being built that is 45 days away. I am wondering whether it is possible to have a dummy website (with same domain name) in play and starting the SEO effort so that these 45 days are not wasted from an SEO point of view. Is this something you have seen done effectively, or is it a no no. Kind Regards, Justin
Reporting & Analytics | | jchapman50 -
How does Google sort multiple websites in one GWT account?
Today I noticed one of our sub-domains listed in our Google Webmaster Tools Account moved from the 6th position to the 2nd position. Is there a reason for this (perhaps urls/sites listed at the top require the most attention)?
Reporting & Analytics | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Why is my traffic dropping so hard?
Hi guys, My traffic has been dropping pretty hard from just over 3k to around 250 in the last few days. I've ran a few tests using Google webmaster tools and Open Site Explorer, as well as answering a pretty cool quiz that was created by an SEO to determine if I'm the victim of any Google updates etc, and everything is looking okay... What do you think could be causing this issue? We're only just gearing up to start on a SEO campaign. At the moment no SEO is being done other than just casual blogging. CcZoXP7.png
Reporting & Analytics | | featherseo0 -
Is there any way to find out how many people blocked our site in Google?
With it being a factor in Panda, I would like to know what the number is and whether it's high / low compared to other sites etc. I kind of doubt a lot of people would have blocked us, but I'd like to at least be aware of whether that's a problem for us.
Reporting & Analytics | | rango0 -
GA Regular Expression
Can anyone tell me how to do a regular expression in the new version of GA? I want to remove specific keywords from organic reports. In the previous version of GA I used the following (phrase1|phrase2|phrase3) but that doesn't work anymore.
Reporting & Analytics | | SoulSurfer80 -
Sudden Drop in Direct Traffic
We recently had a some changes to our site, adding new sub categories, moving products around, etc... We implemented the changes on Thursday of last week and had a normal day around 800+ visitors. The very next day our # of visitors dropped in half to around 400+ and has stayed that way all weekend. I thought it might be that some links may have changed but I checked all of the links and they are the same as before with the exception of new pages. I checked to make sure that the google analytics code was still in the code and it is. I read that it could be DNS propagation timing issue but it's been 3 days and nothing's changed. I'm fairly certain that we are not being penalized or pandalized by google as our referrals and organic search results have not changed only the amount of direct traffic. Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?
Reporting & Analytics | | LizIslCo0