Direct traffic in Analytics means visits that arrived with no source attached. Much of it comes from email links, PDFs, apps and secure sites linking to plain HTTP pages, not from people typing your address.

The biggest source nobody can explain

Open the channels report in Analytics for almost any small business site and direct is near the top, often the largest source of visits.

It is supposed to mean people who typed the address or used a bookmark. Owners tend to read it as word of mouth: people who already know the business.

Some of it is. But in Universal Analytics, direct really means a visit that arrived with no information about where it came from.

That is a different thing, and a lot of real marketing ends up hidden inside it.

How Analytics decides

When a visitor follows a link, the browser normally passes along the address of the page they came from. Analytics reads that and files the visit as a referral, a search or a social visit.

If the link carries campaign tags, short labels added to the end of the address, Analytics uses those instead.

When there is neither, the visit is filed as direct. There is no category for unknown, so direct is where unknown goes.

One detail keeps the figure smaller than it might be. A returning visitor who arrives with no source is credited to their last known source from the previous six months.

What is really inside direct

The fourth surprises people most. Browsers drop the source when a visitor goes from a secure HTTPS page to a plain HTTP one, so links from secure directories, suppliers and associations can arrive as direct.

Email and documents

Email is often the largest leak. A newsletter, a quote, an invoice with a link in the footer: clicked from a desktop email program or a phone's mail app, each arrives with no source.

PDFs behave the same way. A price list, a brochure or a menu with links in it sends visits that look exactly like someone typing the address.

The fix is campaign tags. Google's free Campaign URL Builder adds three labels to a link: where it came from, what kind of link it is, and which campaign it belongs to.

A link tagged as a newsletter, from email, for the January issue, then shows up in Analytics under those names instead of direct.

Apps and messages

Links shared in messaging apps, text messages and some social apps often arrive with nothing attached.

Some apps pass enough for Analytics to recognise where a visit came from. A link one customer sends a friend in a message rarely does.

You cannot tag what customers share. You can tag what you post yourself, so at least your own links are counted properly.

The share of direct that really is friends passing on your address is word of mouth after all, and it is worth knowing it is there.

A worked example

A sawmill on a rural highway sells beams, timbers and fence boards to local contractors and homeowners. Every second Monday it emails a stock list, as a PDF, to a few hundred customers.

The PDF has links to the website's order page. The owner had been told the site's biggest source was direct traffic, and took it as proof that customers knew the address by heart.

He was about to stop the stock list, which took a morning to prepare each time. The pattern said otherwise: direct visits jumped every second Monday and Tuesday, almost all of them landing on the order page.

The links in the PDF were tagged, and the next stock list showed up in Analytics under its own name.

A second leak turned up at the same time. A builders' association directory had moved to HTTPS, and its visitors had been arriving as direct, because the sawmill's site was still on plain HTTP.

The stock list stayed. Moving the site to HTTPS went on the list for February.

Secure pages and plain ones

When a visitor clicks from an HTTPS page to a plain HTTP page, browsers withhold the source by default, so the secure address does not leak.

Google search itself is set up so its visits are still recognised. Many other sites are not.

Moving your own site to HTTPS fixes this for links from secure sites, and there are other good reasons to do it as well.

Your own visits

Staff who open the website to check a price or copy a phone number count as visitors, and almost always as direct ones.

In a small office that can be a noticeable share of the total. A filter that excludes the office's own internet address, set up on one reporting view, takes them out.

Leave a second view entirely unfiltered as a permanent record. Filters cannot be undone on data already collected.

Reading what is left

Some direct traffic is real: people who typed the address from a truck door or a business card, and regulars with a bookmark.

Look at which pages direct visits land on. The home page is plausible. A deep page with a long address was almost certainly reached through a link that lost its label.

Spikes on particular days usually point to an email or a mailing. Match them against your calendar and the cause is rarely hard to find.

The counter-case

For a business with very little marketing, direct may be mostly what it claims to be: regulars and people who were told the address.

Tagging also takes discipline. A tag with a typo creates a new source with an odd name, and inconsistent labels split one campaign into several lines.

A short written list of the labels you use, kept with whoever sends the emails, solves most of that.

For anyone sending emails, documents or newsletters with links in them, the advice stands: tag what you send, and treat direct as unknown until shown otherwise.

This month

  1. Check how large direct is in the channels report.
  2. List the landing pages direct visits arrive on.
  3. Tag every link in your newsletter.
  4. Tag links in PDFs and email signatures.
  5. Filter out the office in a reporting view.
  6. Keep one unfiltered view untouched.
  7. Plan the move to HTTPS for a quiet month.

Step three has the quickest payoff. A newsletter goes out every month, and from the next issue onwards its visits stop disappearing into direct.

Comparing those channels month by month, against the busy and quiet parts of the year, follows from a website year planned around your busy season.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as direct in Analytics?

A visit that arrived with no information about where it came from. Typed addresses and bookmarks are part of it, but so are many lost links.

Why do email links show as direct?

Desktop email programs and mail apps usually send no source when a link is clicked. Campaign tags on the link tell Analytics where the visit came from instead.

Does my site being on HTTP matter?

Yes. Browsers withhold the source when a click goes from an HTTPS page to an HTTP page, so links from secure sites can arrive as direct.

How do I tag a link?

Add campaign labels to the end of the address, using Google's free Campaign URL Builder: the source, the kind of link, and the campaign it belongs to.

Do staff visits count as direct?

Usually, yes. Filter the office's internet address out of a reporting view, and keep one unfiltered view untouched as a record, since filters cannot be undone.

How can I tell lost links from real direct?

Look at landing pages and dates. Direct visits to deep pages with long addresses, or spikes on particular days, usually mean a link that lost its source.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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