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.
Might as well throw branded organic keywords into that mystery pot as well. If a user got to your site via a search for “Company Name”, it’s quite likely that you have some other marketing/referral avenue to thank instead of your awesome natural search strategy. So in the same respect as direct traffic, branded KWs deliver a total lack of insight.
Separating branded KWs from non-branded KWs is one of the first things I do for clients to see where they’re at. If organic search is 30% of your traffic but branded KWs are 90% of that 30%, then your organic search sucks.
I noticed that get much direct traffic for my site and couldn’t understand how it’s possible. This is true what you wrote about.
Thank you for sharing this. I have always wondered how people got to be classified under direct traffice. My site is quite new. It is not even completely done yet. So it is quite unbelievable!
Do you know a free service similar to Google Analytics that provides more accurate statistics?
Seriously awesome post, thanks for this!
I had a huge spike in the traffic coming to my blog (www.techkik.com) and it seemed that 70% of it was direct traffic. Something just didnt add up. There couldnt have been such an enourmous spike in direct traffic when my blog is 1 month old and i dont really do any form of advertising or SEO.
I did some trolling online and came upon your post and now it makes total sense that the direct traffic could have indeed by referred. Any ideas on tools I could use to get a further breakdown of the direct traffic?
Thanks for clearing up such a common misconception. The linked to list of direct traffic causes is an excellent resource as well with a fair few I’d never thought of.
Great Info. You post really cleared my doubts regarding direct traffic sources.
Very good eye opener.
Even in my analytics data I get a lot of direct traffic but most of it have the average time as 00:00:00 !!! which is very very misleading, did visitors just type my URL, hit enter and lcose the window immediately ???
Great article indeed, thanks for this.
i used to have a regular 60% of “direct traffic” on my campaign, and then suddenly on my last one it came down to 10%…
Do you know to what that might be related ? Is there any benchmark for Direct vs Paid traffic.
Many thanks for your help, appreciated
Thanks
I always assumed it was URL based…this is eye opening! Thank you for taking the time to explain it to the newbies like myself.
Great article ! Understanding analytics has become an essential part for every SEO practitioner.
Great post. To be honest this is news to me. As I work in an Agency we do not really analyse data for direct traffic, we just take it for what it is. will keep this is mind going forward.
Cheers
I have noticed that my analytics now says “Undefined” for what I can only assume is this kind of traffic. Direct is still there, but I think they can now determine the difference to make it less confusing.