What counts as direct traffic- Google Analytics

Direct traffic = Visitors that came to your site without first visiting a search engine, another site or some marketing tactic. Below are some ways that the traffic is marked as direct:

1. Somebody typed in the link or used a bookmark
2. They clicked on a link in an email (not always true. If they used some kind of web mail, the web mail server will be the referrer)
3. The link was in a document
4. The link originates at a secure (https:) page and your page is not secure (http)
5. Spiders and bots were working from a list of URLs from a previous crawl (this one mostly applies to server logs, rarely to SDC)
6. Spiders and bots may be programmed to suppress the referrer information (this one mostly applies to server logs, rarely to SDC)
7. The visitor is using IE and the link to your site was in Javascript. Javascript links to your site include those that open your site in a new browser window, or any kind of javascript redirect. (Most banners are setup like this).
8. The visitor is using IE and the link to your site is from within a Flash application (there are ways to resolve this in programming)
9. Your landing page redirects to another page via a 301 permanent server-side redirect
10. The link was on an intranet or some other web site behind a proxy or corporate gateway that was set up to strip referrers from requests
11. The visitor has made changes to their browser that suppresses the referrer information
12. Another site has put your page content into an iFrame and coded the frame to suppress the referrer, in order to make it difficult for you to find out who is framing your content

This research came about as a client of mine has no keyword or search engine traffic, it was 98.8% direct traffic. It transpires he had registered about 9 different domians (.co.uk, .mob, .com etc) and he had redirected them all at the .com domain.

New post soon as to what I advised him to do next.

 

The direct traffic usually is a newsletter, but it’s any hyperlink that’s external to the website.
 Top 3 likely direct traffic:
 1. Short Links: Clicks from shortened URLs (Linktree., bit.ly links) sometimes lose their tracking information (Possibly Instagram)
2. Bookmarks: I have one of these in my toolbar for my own website.
3. Untracked Email Newsletter Links: Clicks from email signatures don’t usually have tracking (you have Mailchimp anyway for newsletters so you can cross reference vs GA4 here Suzie). Or I can do this on Wednesday depending on how quick you want the information.

Russ - please check for any blocked URLs other than ‘Account’ etc missing or broken GA4 code


Untracked Links from Documents: Google documents, or other types of documents maybe a PDF from Living Homes etc
 Links from Apps: Clicks from mobile apps or desktop applications (like WhatsApp)

Social Media Platforms: Some social media platforms or messaging services strip out referrer data for privacy reasons, again, Meta does this I think - I can check  
Incognito or Private Browsing Modes: These modes can sometimes limit the amount of referrer data passed to websites, hence private browsing.
Manual Entry: The user tapping the website in the address bar. 

 

1/8/10 6:27 PM