What is Direct Traffic

bybotipton

7.6K followers

8 years ago

One of the things I have seen being discussed and have had several people ask me what is Direct Traffic.

First off it is not when a someone stands in an intersection and directs traffic.

I am not going to give you a big long explanations because you could write several post on what is Direct Traffic. I am going to try to explain it simply as I can. I like Simple.

My niche is traffic and traffic generation and I have been working in that niche for over 15 years. So I know a little about it but i am not anywhere close to knowing it all. I know enough to get by and make a living.

If you are an IT person or Web Developer this may sound like an oversimplification but it is my bare bones plain English definition of Direct Traffic.

Direct Traffic is traffic that comes into Google Analytics or any other traffic program that the tracking program cannot tell where it came from.

It may be

That someone typed in your URL

They had you bookmarked and clicked the bookmark

Your site is a HTTP:// the visitor came from a Https:// site. That site they came from will not share info with an insecure site

Came from clicking a link in an email

Came from clicking a link in Skype or other desktop messengers

Clicked a link in Microsoft Office, Excel, PDF or some other document.

The user clicked on a URL-shortener link that was used to shorten your link.

The browser you are using may not report which site referred you and it ends up direct traffic. Here is an example from one of my site showing this months traffic. See how many times the browser was not even recognized but less the site you clicked on.

The user clicks on a link in any desktop software in general.

Many people are running Apps or software to not leave tracks on the Internet and that traffic will show up as direct traffic.

Click a link in a Mobile Social Media App like Facebook or Twitter. You post a link on Facebook they click on your link using a mobile device it is direct traffic. Many phone Apps do not pass on referrer info. If they clicked on your site on a phone it will probably be direct traffic.

In September 2012 Apple released iOS 6 which did not report the referrer and clicks got marked as direct which made organic traffic drop on most sites. In July 2013 Apple corrected that and within a week the traffic went back to organic from Direct. Just because a change in software.

Direct traffic is just unknown traffic or undefined. Google does not know if the URL was typed in or bookmarked or where it came from. All it knows is that it does not have enough information to tell you where it came from so it is called direct.

Groupon did a study and it showed that as much as 60% of direct traffic may be from organic search but it is not getting reported for many reason.

Next time you see Direct traffic remember it is not that people typed in your URL or had you bookmarked although that might be true, but what it means is the tracking program does not have enough information to tell you where the visit came from.

I hope this helped you understand it a little better.