It sounds like a straightforward question, doesn’t it? If you’ve looked at your Google Analytics channel data or had a brief summary of your web traffic, you’d likely think – “That’s simple. It’s people who came directly to my website.”<\/p>\n
But ask any digital marketer worth their salt (and\/or yak butter coffee) and you’re likely to receive\u00a0a much longer and more nuanced answer.<\/p>\n
Direct traffic is, in part, the simple definition given above – \u00a0people who went directly to your site. They clicked on the box at the top of their browser and typed in your URL. This also includes people who came to your site through a bookmark or a link in a .pdf as well.<\/p>\n
Where things really get tricky is that direct traffic is the default for any traffic that enters your site without a source. Any time someone enters your site without source data included, they are counted as direct traffic. This happens more often than one might think. Some common occurrences are:<\/p>\n
– When someone clicks a link in an email that has not been tagged. Links in emails need to be manually tagged in order to pass data and be counted as email rather than direct.<\/p>\n
– When someone clicks on a link in a social profile on an app or from a social dashboard like Tweetdeck or Buzzbundle. This is known as \u201cDark Social\u201d and doesn\u2019t pass the source data.<\/p>\n
– When a user is transferred from an HTTPS page to an HTTP page. When a transfer occurs from a secure site to a non secure site it removes the users source.<\/p>\n
Any time the source is removed for whatever reason – whether it is general procedure or an unfortunate technical glitch – the user will be counted as direct. Maintaining the integrity of your data is the fact that Google will never change a user’s source to direct if there is a previously known source<\/a>. So with the HTTPS to HTTP, if a user enters an unsecure section of your site from a secure section Google will not change that user to direct.<\/p>\n Any time someone enters your site without source data included, they are counted as direct traffic. This happens more often than one might think.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Looking at all these examples you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that these issues might not apply to you. After all, if you’re not running email campaigns or don’t have social profiles then your direct traffic wouldn\u2019t be that messed up.<\/p>\n You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that… but you\u2019d still be wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n For years marketers wondered the same thing, but then Groupon released an interesting case study<\/a>. Basically, they \u201cdeindexed\u201d their site, or removed all the pages from Google\u2019s index. Then what they did was they watched how far their direct traffic fell. After all, if direct traffic is people who went directly to your site it shouldn\u2019t be affected, right? Wrong. What they observed was a 60% drop in direct traffic.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cDark social\u201d is clearly a\u00a0serious issue in measuring traffic accurately as well. According to Marketing Land<\/a>\u00a0(reporting \u00a0on\u00a0an paywalled article by Radian One), 69% of social sharing is dark sharing. This is a significant number! Social sharing makes up a large portion of traffic on the internet and 69% of it is being counted as direct, not social. And don\u2019t forget, just because you don\u2019t have a social profile doesn\u2019t mean your pages can\u2019t be shared by other people.<\/p>\n And to make matters worse, there has been a recent influx of spam traffic<\/a> that is being bucketed as direct but doesn\u2019t actually represent real, live users. The spammers don\u2019t actually enter your site, they just trigger your analytics snippet to make it think that there was a visit. If this is done frequently, a large portion of your traffic could be false. When it comes to direct traffic, these are referred to as \u201cghost referrals\u201d and generally come hand in hand with spam referral traffic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s tough to say for any given site how much direct traffic is really direct. Groupon experienced a 60% drop in direct traffic after deindexing their site but this might not be true for other sites. Websites with less social interaction will also be impacted less by \u201cdark social\u201d and sites that have taken steps to eliminate spam traffic<\/a> will have a clearer picture of direct traffic. As things stand now, however, no site will completely eliminate these problems and it\u00a0is probably safe to assume that direct traffic isn\u2019t exactly accurate.<\/p>\n For now, look at your traffic report like a political analysts reading the latest crazy propaganda<\/a> coming out of North Korea: It may be wildly exaggerated or even patently false, but if you dig deep enough you will still find valuable insights.<\/p>\n Questions or comments? Leave them below or get in touch <\/a>with us!<\/em>