Analytics Direct Traffic is NOT What You Think It Is
June 29th, 2009 | 
Author: Analytics direct traffic reports are often viewed as both a highly insightful metric and, in itself, as a particularly valuable stream of visitors. These are people that typed your URL directly into their browser, right? They must have seen your TV ad or just been really engaged with your brand because they remembered your address and didn’t need to use search. Who could ask for better visitors? They are motivated and focused and really intended to come here.
This kind of language continues to dominate all kinds of discussions about web analytics, including blogs, forums, and articles – and even reaches into the field of the experts; just look at the way Google Analytics defines direct traffic. It’s even more worrying when I hear the way my clients talk about it!
The fact is, this definition of direct traffic in web analysis is extremely misleading. It’s true that the direct traffic bucket does include bookmark traffic and typed URLs, but these days (unless you are very strict about your campaign tracking parameters) it can and does include all kinds of other stuff. All it really means is that the session started without a referrer being passed by the user’s browser, and this can happen for lots of reasons as defined in this rather neat list. I have done some tests on some of my clients’ sites and estimate that in some cases up to 90% of ‘direct’ traffic is infact banner ad or PPC traffic!
Here’s an exercise you can perform that will demonstrate exactly how prolific this problem is: as you’re browsing the Internet and following links from one site to the next, you can check the referrer that is passed by typing the following snippet of code into the address bar of your browser:
javascript:alert(document.referrer)
For example, if you visit a site like AOL and click on one of the advertising banners, when you arrive at the destination page replace the URL with the code – a pop-up will appear showing you the referrer (or nothing if one wasn’t passed). Try this with different types of sites, banners and links. Also try it with different browsers. As you will see, quite a lot of the time the referrer is blank. This means that your visit would have been counted as direct traffic in the analytics reports of that site!
So, it’s time stop thinking of direct traffic as people typing in your URL, this isn’t necessarily the case. ‘Other’ or ‘unknown’ would be a more accurate description.
It’s also time to realise the importance of campaign tracking on your inbound links, as Avinash Kaushik points out in his definition of analytics direct traffic. If you always ensure that your links are passing source and campaign info, then you are forcing the referrer field to be populated even if the browser doesn’t pass it. Here’s an easy way to build campaign tracking URLs in Google Analytics.
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Nice. Didn’t realize it extended to some banner and/or PPC campaign links! Reinforces the need to track everything inbound if it is of any significance.
Definitely will keep that mind as i go forward. Thanks for the post!
Important blog-post, this. I’m going to have a lot of my clients look at this. Thanks for reminding everyone.
Good points Johnny.
Just to add my 2 cents worth… One of the largest segments I see labelled as “direct” in Google Analytics is actually visits that originated from an email click-through i.e. a linking that did not have campaign parameters. from signatures to email blasts…
Best regards, Brian
Thanks Jonny, your posts provides an excellent explanation of why Direct Traffic is often so high. I didn’t realise that paid traffic could be counted as Direct Traffic, thanks for highlighting this.
Hi Johnny
This is a very illusive topic. In fact 50% of the problem slipped through the post.
There are many “direct” visits that began by bookmark, typed URL, etc that should be direct but are attributed to other traffic sources.
What started as a short post to track truly direct visitors with the User Defined cookie required a treatise on the subject:
http://blog.vkistudios.com/index.cfm/2009/7/10/Tips-Tricks-Traps-and-Tools-41-of-many-Understanding-Direct-Visits-in-Google-Analytics-UDVs
Your critique will be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Brian Katz – Analytics – VKI
I, for one, never use Direct Traffic in my reports and analyses anymore. It’s full of unreliable crap.
That’s useful info. I had no idea this was the case. Do you the reason in the case a referrer isn’t passed?
@Tom – I agree with Brian on this one. The vast majority of cases where I received a (direct) referral was because of an email campaign. Sometimes this happens when a person is using their non-default browser as well.
Your biggest clue that a referrer was not passed is when you have a deep link – yoursite.com/blog/some-random-topic. Web users don’t type or copy/paste these urls. So if you see a bunch of direct referrals for deep links, start trying to track it down and add some campaign parameters to links.