Drop in direct traffic
-
Hi,
I help look after two websites and have been tracking traffic sources for a couple of years. I have noticed that both sites have seen a drop in direct traffic over 2 years. Has anyone else noticed this and do you have a hypothesis as to the reason?
Overall, on both sites traffic has increased.
Thanks,
Amelia
-
Thanks guys,
The niche for both sites is UK mortgages - one specialises in commercial and buy to let mortgages, the other residential mortgages. Neither subject is particularly interesting unless you're looking for one at the time - e.g. interesting when you want/need to finance your home purchase but not something most people care about once its all in place! Its a means to an end, and often the least 'fun' part of buying a home! We make it happen, but we're under no illusions that anyone wants a mortgage - they need one which is a different kettle of fish altogether. I don't think its something people come back to regularly - apart from the brief period of time when they are looking for a mortgage. (hope that makes sense?) So I personally would not expect a lot of direct traffic.
The quality / quantity of content hasn't changed - if anything our content writer has got even better as he's immersed himself in the subject more and more to be able to provide really insightful and interesting articles.
I am inclined to believe its the way google analytics is attributing visits as you've suggested. As far as I know nothing has been altered specifically, but I'll check this.
Thank you for answering.
Amelia
-
Amelia, it used to be that analytics would report traffic from URL shorteners as direct traffic.
I haven't checked lately, but it could be that is where some of your direct traffic has disappeared to, as Ray-pp suggests.
-
Have you compared the site traffic to the major algorithm updates? If not, check out this simple and free tool to do so easily: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/
That might give you some missing insight and immediate direction.
Edit for a better answer - duh, sorry you specifically mentioned 'direct traffic.'
When it comes to direct traffic, I immediately go to customer loyalty. Have you seen a decrease in the amount of purchases a customer is making (if ecommerce)?
If it is a content website - has the quality / quantity of posting decreased? It would help to know what the niches of the website are and how they add value to the visitor. But, I always think of loyalty when it comes to direct traffic.
Also, direct traffic includes not only visitors that type your URL in, but any errored or dropped referral URLs.It could be that you adjusted the way Analytics is tracking your traffic and it better understands which source to put the traffic into and report it properly. Sometimes, a decrease in traffic is a good thing.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Paid traffic or "Paid Search" is not showing in my Google Analytics
Hi, I have two campaigns running in Google Adwords or Google Ads now and I saw in Google Ads account that I had 5 clicks today (09/18/2018) but when I try to search for this clicks in my Google Analytics in ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Channels I don't find nothing about "Paid Search" or something like that. Bellow is a picture of my Google Analytics account to prove it. The accounts are linked and I can find the 2 campaigns in the Analytics. How can I interpret this picture? Where the paid traffic is showing? or not showing there? Thanks Leandro uvAtrsg
Reporting & Analytics | | lmoraes0 -
Why is Indeed.com traffic appearing as organic in Google Analytics?
A large number of sessions in my client's Google Analytics account appear to come from medium: organic and source:Indeed. Since I'm focused on SEO for this project, I'd prefer that Indeed be treated as referral traffic. Any ideas for fixing this issue? Also, and I'm sure the answer is no, is there a way to fix the past data in Google Analytics that has already reported Indeed as an organic medium?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin_P0 -
Any solution to low search traffic on weekend
Hi. all, https://www.babyment.com is content website. our search traffic always shows a dip on weekend (friday to sunday), anyone has idea why it is like this? and is there a solution to this? or this is a just normal? Thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | melvinwu0 -
Gets traffic on both domain.dk and domain.dk/default.asp
Hi. Im runnning a couple of sites. And in my analytics/webmastertool I get both traffic on domain.dk and domain.dk/default.asp which are both essentially the same page. I'm pretty sure it would be better, if I somehow could make the default.asp "redirect" to "/". I dont wanna loose the linkjuice thou. Any smart suggestions for an easy fix? /Kasper
Reporting & Analytics | | KasperGJ0 -
Google Analytics: How to Track Blog Traffic that Enter the Purchase Funnel?
I've been trying to figure this out for awhile, but I have had no luck. The current ecommerce store that I work for is trying to find out how to track how many people coming in via the blog are converting/buying. The site lives on Magento and the blog is on wordpress and they both use the same Google Analytics code. Site URL: http://website.com/ Blog URL: http://website.com/blog Is there anyway to do this so you can see which landing pages are driving conversions? If not, Is it possible to set up Google Analytics to show conversions and revenue coming from people who enter through blog directory?
Reporting & Analytics | | Erik-M0 -
Linked my adwords account to GA and vice versa and still paid search is getting recorded into organic traffic??
Hi Mozzers, I have linked properly my adwords account to GA and vice versa and somehow I can see 3/4 of this paid traffic recorded to organic search. The most confusing part is that I can see 1/4 of the paid traffic under the "paid" metric. At this point I don't know really what should I do? Thank you guys in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Impression Drops Starting from June 2
In Webmaster Tools and the Linked Data in GA, we got huge bumps for some of our keywords this last week and subsequently were dropped from the face of the earth for other words were were tracking but not SEOing for. Basically for anything higher than 3rd page SERP, 30+ we were removed from Google search and we're no longer showing rankings for any of these words. Is this a new change as part of Penguin? I wonder b/c a lot of those words that were in the 60-100 in SERP were, as I mentioned, not focus SEO words but the backlinks were probably specific keywords, as we only have say 6 links and 4 are the same anchor text, this would put those words in the 60% over optimization penalty.
Reporting & Analytics | | Dweber0 -
How to see traffic for specific keywords in GA
Hell guys, What i want to achieve is to generate a list of specific keywords showing traffic for a certain periode of time. I also want so be able to compare this time period with historical data. I want a list as shown in: Traffic sources -> sources -> search -> organic. This shows a list of keywords generating traffic out of the organic search results. When you use a filter you can only use one word so it seems. I just want to create that list but with the specific keywords i choose to display. I tried advanced reports and advanced segments but that doesn't really give me what i want. The idea behind this whole thing is that i want to give my client an overview of the traffic received on the words we are optimizing for. this traffic has to be compared to the previous month so they can see clearly if there were changes. Thx !
Reporting & Analytics | | 5MMedia0