For any blogger that has taken a look at their traffic stats in their Google Analytics account, they will be familiar with the term ‘Direct Traffic’ which Google uses as a catch-all category of traffic that they simply cannot accurately measure the source of.
Sometimes Google Analytics cannot measure traffic sources for reasons like people typing the web address directly into their web browser’s address bar, or where they’re directed to a page from an offline source such as a link in a PDF document.
This simply isn’t good enough for you as you desire an understanding of your traffic sources, so you can figure out what sort of reader engagement you have, which traffic strategies to apply more focus to and which ones to dump like yesterday’s trash.
This is extremely important since this understanding determines the allocation of your time, focus and resources. This helps you to use your most precious resource – time – wisely and effectively.
You should always be looking to get better results (more output) from less work (less input). This is the essence of business leverage – it’s all about setting up smart traffic systems that reward you again and again for a one-time effort.
My Findings
OK, now I’ve discussed the mindset elements of successful traffic generation, let’s get to business.
Before I did any custom link tracking using the Google URL Builder, my traffic was divided into the 3 main default traffic sources which Google Analytics divides the traffic into to help website owners understand their traffic sources. They are:
- Search Traffic
- Referral Traffic
- Direct Traffic
You can build customised links which look like this:
http://www.theprofitshare.com/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=IM%2BToolsAs you can see, the link contains tracking properties which assign the click within a source, medium and campaign within your Google Analytics account.
Let’s quickly have a look at the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ results of my findings.
[Click any of the images to quickly expand them.]
After setting up an additional campaign source which I called ‘social’, you can see that a lot of my ‘Direct Traffic’ and ‘Referral Traffic’ moved across into ‘Campaigns’ traffic. You will also notice that ‘Search Traffic’ increased over the period too which has little relevance to the findings I’m presenting in this article.
I predicted the shift of ‘Referral Traffic’ into the ‘Campaigns’ traffic segment before I even started the experiment since it was obvious that any Twitter traffic that previously fell into the ‘Referral Traffic’ category would now fall into the newly created ‘Campaigns’ category.
However, what I didn’t expect was for some of the traffic that was being recorded as ‘Direct Traffic’ to also move into the ‘Campaigns’ category. Since Twitter was the only place where I was using customised link tracking, I knew that the decrease in ‘Direct Traffic’ was due to Twitter traffic that was previously being recorded as ‘Direct Traffic’.
Of course, I still do not know why Twitter traffic was previously being recorded under direct traffic, however I suspect that the use of either custom URL’s such as ThePS.co (my own) or other widely used URL shorteners such as bit.ly or budurl.com are not tracked. Hits in your Analytics account that arrive from such URLs are usually from the site itself where your links are being published.
Allow me to show you this change another way. Check out the screen captures below showing ‘Direct Traffic’ from 1st July to 31 August, 2011.
The graphic includes a catastrophic loss of traffic due to a computer hard drive crash taking my laptop out of action for 6 days. This meant I could not drive traffic from Tweet Adder, which is my secret sauce for Twitter traffic. However, from the graphic below it is clearly visible that the ‘Direct Traffic’ went through the floor straight after I implemented custom URLs with link tracking using Google’s Link Builder tool.
Compare this with ‘Campaigns Traffic’ at the same time in the graphic below. Sure, some of the traffic below is due to the reallocation of ‘Referral Traffic’ and the remainder will be the ‘Direct Traffic’ that I’ve been demonstrating throughout this article.
OK, so what does this mean?
So I’ve taken you through my findings and demonstrated that what is meant to be ‘Direct Traffic’ is not always just ‘Direct’ traffic. It is simply a collection of visitors that arrive at your site which, for whatever reason, Google Analytics cannot track, so it puts it into the ‘Direct Traffic’ category.
This always made sense to me because it seemed to me that 2,000 – 3,000 people wasn’t coming to my site each month by typing “theprofitshare.com” into their web browser address bars. These kind of searches simply do not fit in with browser behaviour on the web. Whilst some people do this since they know Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox auto-completes based upon their browsing history, I really do not expect over a third of my traffic to be doing this. It’s a nice thought for a blogger’s ego, but it’s simply not the truth.
One thing to bear in mind is that when you publish on Twitter, that content is most likely syndicated in other areas around the web which use Twitter feeds gaining you additional exposure where visitors can click but Google Analytics cannot track. This can especially be the case if you use something like Yahoo! Pipes to create a customised RSS mash-up feed and then an RSS submission tool/service to submit your feeds to. Whilst Analytics will capture most of the tweets from Twitter.com, they cannot capture all the syndicated tweets on other platforms.
Action Points
I hope you’ll create meaningful segments of traffic to help you understand your blog’s readership better. If you can set up custom segments using Google’s URL Builder in conjunction with Google Analytics’ Goal Conversions feature, then you’ll begin to build an accurate picture of what your most highly qualified traffic sources are. Of course this means better conversions from less traffic which has got to be a great thing.
What are your findings? Let us know in the comments below!
And don’t forget to Tweet, Like and +1 !
To Your Online Success,
The Profit Share
The mutt's nuts or the dog's drivel? I double dare you to leave a comment! :-)
Interesting findings, Wayne.
I had a guest post on my blog not too long ago about using Google URL Builder to track traffic better.
Of course, I can never find time to actually implement it…
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Hey Ana,
I know you had a guest post on your blog as I was inspired to change my traffic tracking as a result of it. It reminded me of “one of those things” that I “should” do.
Part of changing my focus from purely traffic to one of conversion. I realised I needed to pull both sides of the puzzle into a balance.
Wayne Lambert invites you to read The Illusion of “Direct” Traffic
Hello Wayne, Anna. I have realized while reading a couple posts on this topic that there is no one analytics tool that covers all basis. To be really effective, you need 3-4 tools which you monitor now and then. I’ll tell you what, the guy that produces a product that tracks ALL link accurately will be a billionaire in 30 days. But if Google can’t even get it right, what about mere mortals like us ;)
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Hi Patricia,
Welcome to my blog. :)
I guess you must be a Traffic Generation Cafe fan too, huh?
I must admit Patricia I would rather master the full use of one tool, Google Analytics, and understand all its metrics rather than dabble with lots of tools and flood my brain with loads of conflicting information that may restrict my decision making ability due to “analysis paralysis.”
Furthermore, having lots of code snippets such as 3-4 lots of tracking JavaScript will significantly slow your blog down and I, for one, do everything I can to speed it up since Google gives you authority and rankings (ie. traffic) for it.
If Google did charge a few bucks per month to help me understand my site better, I would gladly pay for it! But just don’t tell Google… we’ll keep it as our little secret. ;-)
Wayne Lambert invites you to read Blogging Strategy: How to Blog Strategically
Wayne,
This is a great post. Thanks for putting the time into detailing the process, before and after.
“Direct” traffic has always been more of a “catch-all” than a good identifier of how people get to a site…
Best,
-Caleb
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Welcome Caleb.
You’re absolutely right, however as I mentioned in the post, if you use Google URL Builder, you can have more of your traffic properly tracked leaving just the untrackable behind.
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Very true, however I hate the URL builder tool from Google – totally inefficient and prone to inconsistency, which will kill campaign tracking reportability.
I have a free spreadsheet tool that is much easier to use and enforces consistency, shows history of tags used, etc… it’s free at http://goo.gl/1q2IX.
Also great to use, the new http://utm.to and http://awe.sm which auto-tags your shortened links for GA.
Best,
-Caleb
Caleb Whitmore invites you to read Web Analytics Planning Model for Google Analytics
Hi Caleb,
This comment found its way to the spam comments because you used 3 links and I very rarely go through those.
Anyway, thanks for suggesting the tools. I hope people go check them out to see if they can help their campaign tracking.
Wayne Lambert invites you to read Ten Top Headlines That Get Good Traffic
Hello Wayne. First off, I am IMPRESSED by your high value posts. I’ve been looking at a few today and cannot find ONE post that has fluff in them. Respect.
Secondly. I have always been disappointed at GA’s willy-nilly reports. I’m gonna definitely have a look at the Google URL builder.
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Hi Ivin,
Welcome to my blog. :)
It is tough to keep posts direct and to the point, yet light hearted.
My blog does this to an extent, however my membership site does this in a much more structured fashion.
Anyone who has already encountered the same knowledge might see the content as fluff or filler, however for someone who doesn’t know how to overcome that particular obstacle, then it should serve as close as possible to a step by step guide.
Wayne Lambert invites you to read The Illusion of “Direct” Traffic
Damn, that’s useful. I had no idea!
I was really confused about my high percentage of Direct traffic and didn’t even know the URL builder existed.
Great post!
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Hi Jason,
Welcome to my blog. :)
Glad you found benefit from the post.
Get started with Google URL Builder whilst your blog is young. This way you can always get a good picture of where your traffic is really coming from.
Wayne Lambert invites you to read Blogging Strategy: How to Blog Strategically
I got to know a lot about analytics in your post,
nice one!
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Hi Abejith,
Welcome to my blog. :)
Glad I can assist with you building knowledge of Google Analytics.
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What an interesting post Wayne. Unfortunately for me it isn’t something that I would use as I like to keep my blogging as simple as possible and incorporating a tracking code into my urls is not something I would do.
Having said that I’m sure there are many who would love to learn of this option and who knows some of them may be my twitter followers.
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Thank you Sire.
It’s much simpler and quicker than you might think.
Not everyone is into tracking but I have recently got much better at this.
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Good article. Fairly heavy reading but necessary because the whole direct traffic concept irritates me as I really like to understand the numbers in my analytics and it’s something that leaves me completely frustrated.
Hi Jonathan,
Yes, the article is targeted towards intermediate level marketers who want to understand their traffic sources in more detail.
If you want to understand the numbers in GA, I suggest you use the Google URL builder for your links.
Wayne Lambert invites you to read Protect Your Computer from Invisible Threats
I guess ideally you want direct to be only those going directly there from their computer. All referral traffic to be broken down into a list of which other site they came from. Thanks for pointing out especially:, “”the decrease in ‘Direct Traffic’ was due to Twitter traffic that was previously being recorded as ‘Direct Traffic’.”"
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I think t.co is the twitter traffic. Anyway still very confusing
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This is very useful! I just saw a wave of direct traffic today and was confused… as my site is only about a week old. Generally, my direct traffic (which I thought simply meant people that went directly to the site) spends at least 5 minutes reading articles, etc… This wave basically all bounced. Now I see where it could have come from.
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Great post.
Isn’t there a simpler way to do it thru a setting at the GA account admin panel?
Manually tagging links isn’t an option for every business size/model.
Thanks for everything :)
Complete judgment! I think by following the consecutive flow of traffic will be fruitful for enhance the present situation/status so the idea will be hired by the bloggers soon. Thanks for sharing the brilliant idea with profound examine.
Direct traffic is really confusing to track. But Google URL builder should help, I guess.
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Nice post. I have been getting lots of direct traffic on one of my sites which just came out newly and been wondering where the heck did all this people come from.
Thanks for answering this question
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