Has anyone noticed a dramatic drop in direct visits year over year in GA across multiple sites?

[bradwayland]

I monitor about 10 websites in GA.  Many of these sites are in a stable phase of their lifecycle.  I've noticed this year that direct visits on all my sites and even friends sites have dropped by 20-60%.  Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year?  In every instance I have no penalties, notices, anything and the drop is made up completely of "direct visits".

[bradwayland]

Did you guys ever make any sense out of this?

[bradwayland]

Did you ever come up with any explanation for this?

[shawn81]

Yes I am seeing it too. Very strange. Overall my traffic on my 3 biggest sites is up, but direct visitis is down by about 30%.

[bradwayland]

@jp have you come up with any possible thoughts on what it could be?  I am really surprised that there aren't more people talking about this.  I'm at Mozcon right now.  I would like to see if someone here could answer it.

[NaHoku]

We are experiencing a similar phenomenon.

[bradwayland]

I didn't ask for methods.  I'm looking for an explanation of why a small sample of sites has seen huge drops in direct visits.  Has anyone seen this issue?

[EGOL]

This does not answer my question at all.  I'm not a web novice.

I don't have your resume or a list of your websites.

So, I gave you solid data and shared a method of increasing your direct visits.

Sorry you didn't like it.

[bradwayland]

This does not answer my question at all.  I'm not a web novice.  I've been using analytics tools for years.  I know for a fact there is something going on with the reporting and someone must have seen this.  Here are the industries I have seen this on.

design blog

design downloads

custom t-shirts

If you look at the current month or any month this year vs the same timeframe last year you see drops anywhere from 30-60% in directs.  It is not affecting my sales.  It is causing goal conversions to climb arbitrarily.  These sites are not all related.  I have even checked against other friends with established websites and seen the same thing.  If you have a site that is in a growth mode you won't notice it.  I have a site that is up 250% in organic that doesn't appear the same way.  Older properties with more stable traffic and less growth are showing it.

[EGOL]

Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year?

I am only watching a few sites and we are working every day on those sites.  Direct visits are climbing climbing on those sites.   If you are continuously adding new content to these sites that engages the visitor your direct visits should be going up.

We are adding new content to these sites every week.  And showing that content prominently on the homepage and across the site with server side includes.  We also have programs that rotate the content on the homepage so visitors who visit multiple times in a week see different content on each visit.  This freshness makes people come back to see what is new and that type of visit is usually a direct visit or a domain query, which I believe are enormously valuable for increasing your rankings.