direct traffic in google analytics

Direct Traffic in Google Analytics: A Complete Guide

Direct traffic is often misunderstood by a reasonable number of marketers and business owners. It’s important to note that direct traffic in Google Analytics does not necessarily mean that people visit your website directly by entering the URL in the browser’s address bar. It can mean much more.

Let’s explore it in detail.

Google Analytics categorize traffic in the following primary channels-

  • Organic search
  • CPC (Paid) (Paid Social and Paid Search)
  • Referral
  • Direct

Direct traffic is often misunderstood as a positive metric. It’s considered as a sign of popularity. On the contrary, if most of your traffic falls in the “direct” category, you may need to work on it.

What is Direct Traffic?

I do not deny that direct traffic comes from users typing your website address directly in the URL. But it is not limited to just this. There’s much more to it.

When you look at the source/medium segmentation carefully, you will notice that the direct shows as direct/none. None means there was no identified medium for this traffic. That’s where the revelation happens.

Direct Traffic Could be Due to Many Reasons- 

  • Shifting HTTP to HTTPS or vice-versa

When the URL redirects from HTTPS to HTTP or from HTTP to HTTPS, most often Analytics loses track of the source medium data and attributes it to direct/none.

Say, your website has a link on website A with an HTTP version of the URL, but when the link is clicked, it redirects to the HTTPS version of the URL on your website. In this case, Analytics will categorize this traffic under direct/none.

  • GA Tracking not Linked

Either you forgot to attach GA tracking or there is a problem with the tag manager. In both conditions, traffic will pass to direct. As the tracker is not able to identify the medium, it will place this session in direct by default.

  • Complex Redirects

Loss of tracking due to complex redirects is a common cause. Even after putting UTM codes for tracking it will not recognize the medium and again by default, it will show up in the direct section.

Redirects are confusing for trackers; it is always advisable to keep redirects as low as possible.

  • Links in Documents

Clicks through links in PDF, Word documents etc. don’t contain information regarding source/medium in general. Hence, any traffic from these sources gets attributed to direct/none.

  • Manual Typing and Bookmarking

Direct traffic from these sources is appreciable because people directly type the URL of your site in this kind of traffic. People bookmark your site or any page of your site to visit later, the traffic from this source is bookmarked traffic. Both these traffic show that people are aware of your brand.

  • Traffic from Client-Side Application

Any traffic which comes from links in different applications, and which does not have any manually tagged UTM parameters, is attributed to direct/none.

  • Browser Issues

This is a client-side issue as the browser setting could be such that it does not allow referrer data and cookie data to be tracked. This one can’t be worked out because it depends on the configuration of the browser.

  • Bots and Crawlers

A lot of bogus information sneaks into your analytics data due to bots and crawlers. Some tools crawl your site like Ahrefs and Google. Analytics can put traffic in referral, direct or in both. So, the possibility of spam traffic is high in this case.

Why You Should Care?

There is nothing to get worried about unless people are searching for your brand directly. The problem appears when the medium is unknown because you are missing real data.

Due to improper tracking, you don’t get the real progress of your work and you end up making unnecessary changes to it.

Also, there is a misconception that your brand is growing but actually, it is not.

Tips to Get Over Direct Traffic-

  • Proper tagging in ad campaigns

If you haven’t enabled auto-tagging yet, you better do it now.

If you are using Google Ads, make use of auto-tagging. In the places where auto-tagging is not possible, you must use manual tagging. But be careful when using manual tagging, as it’s case-sensitive. Even a small spelling mistake can take you on the wrong track.  Various UTM-building tools are available online like URL builder that can help you to build properly formatted links.

  • HTTPS is Always Better

It is better to be on HTTPS from a security point of view. Both the referrer and the main site need to be on HTTPS to avoid this problem.

  • Audit

To believe in your data, you have to make it trustworthy. Your further actions depend on these data. To ensure the same you can do a monthly audit. Along with finding loopholes in your analytics setup, it also helps in successful marketing.

  • Avoid Redirects

Redirects are essential sometimes when there is temporary work on your site or you want to change the URL name. The reasons could be many but having too many redirects is not a healthy practice. It gives confusing signals to the tracker due to which you get undesirable results in analytics.

  • Shared links in non-HTML files

Links shared in PDF and Word should be manually tagged with UTM parameters. It ensures better accuracy for your Analytics data.

Conclusion

If your direct traffic is more than 20%, you should smell something fishy. Troubleshooting your overall analytics set up and the need for manual is important.

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