Comments on: The Forgotten Metric: Direct Traffic Signals Brand Preference

By: Brian Katz

Brian Katz — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:31:39 +0000

Hi Linda
This post caught my eye again after a project I did focusing on Direct Visitors.

It resulted in these 2 blog posts which I expect will be helpful to your readers:
http://blog.vkistudios.com/index.cfm/2009/7/10/Tips-Tricks-Traps-and-Tools-41-of-many-Understanding-Direct-Visits-in-Google-Analytics-UDVs
which deals with typed-in, bookmarked and other types of visit initiators

and “Scenario 1: Improved Attribution” in
http://blog.vkistudios.com/index.cfm/2009/5/12/Tips-Tricks-Traps-and-Tools-4–of-many-Google-Analytics-User-Defined-Variables-udv-Revisited

Brian Katz – Analytics – VKI

By: DoublePlus Ecommerce

DoublePlus Ecommerce — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:09:46 +0000

Do you have a recommendation for “an advanced, cookies-based filter … which will compensate for dynamic IPs”? Or even a place to start looking, if not a true recommendation? Sounds promising…

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:22:10 +0000

Thanks Paul

By: Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing

Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:21:11 +0000

Linda — this is a fantastic look at the most overlooked kind of traffic. Seth Godin would be proud of you… this is just another reminder that we needn’t forget offline marketing principles in doing our work online. We’ve put up a recent video which references your post: http://www.clicksharpmarketing.com/blog/2008/08/07/myths-seo-video-sources-traffic-organic-search/

By: eCommerce Consulting

eCommerce Consulting — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:52:11 +0000

Great post Linda, many people overlook the value in building a brand, and the importance it plays in your overall marketing efforts.

By: Reasons for “Direct Traffic” in referrer reports | WebTrends Outsider

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:06:16 +0000

[...] 31 update: Linda Bustos wrote a good treatment of the same thing for Google Analytics, here. [...]

By: Mariusz Gasiewski

Mariusz Gasiewski — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:44:33 +0000

Blocking IP could be done more easily and flexible using the segmentation cookie (for example the solution described at: http://www.roirevolution.com/blog/2007/11/excluding_all_internal_traffic_the_easy_way.html)

By: Audio Bible

Audio Bible — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:56:58 +0000

Good article and blocking you own IP address traffic from your reports is very important.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:54:14 +0000

@Jon,

Sure, this post was just about Google Analytics because that’s the only tool I’m familiar with right now, but each tool may have different ways of reporting type-ins, and different referrals they consider type-in.

RSS traffic usually is reported from the reader, if it’s web based like Bloglines or Netvibes. If it’s an email subscriber, it may or may not show up as an email referral – that depends. Since subscribers come from all over in terms of reader referrals, Feedburner is a much better tool to understand your subscriber habits than Google.

I really should update this post, I did a bit of research on “reasons for direct traffic” and learned some new things as a result of your comment.

1. Yes, bookmarks count as direct visits
2. However, if it’s a repeat visit and the first visit came from, for example, a PPC campaign, then the direct hit, bookmark or otherwise, does not overwrite the initial visit until the cookie expires. There may be a hack for this.
3. If you missed tagging some of your site’s pages, you could be getting direct traffic from your own site
4. When IE opens in a new window, this may count as direct traffic

And a bunch of more reasons here:
http://www.webtrendsoutsider.com/2008/reasons-for-direct-traffic-in-referrers-reports/

So looking back, I think today’s post is good in theory, but without a way to separate wheat from the chaff (wheat would be visits that were intentionally typed in from the browser), in practice it may not be that useful to look at direct traffic and conversion of direct traffic.

You bring up a good point and I will consider modifying this post accordingly.

By: Jon Schneider

Jon Schneider — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:11:37 +0000

Hi Linda, a question regarding sources of “direct traffic”:

Are there other sources of site visits that can show up as “direct traffic” in analytics tools beyond “type-ins”?

For example, if someone bookmarks a site, and then later (perhaps in a fresh browser session) visits that site via the bookmark, is that “direct traffic” (since there was no referring web page for that visit)?

In the case of a blog like Get Elastic, if a visit to the site comes from a non-web-based RSS reader, would that show up as “direct traffic” as well?