Direct traffic decline
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I've noticed a few of our sites (tour, hotel, and local attraction) which are very established and reasonably high brand recognition that have experienced a significant decrease in branded traffic (-20-30% compared to same period from the previous year) the past few months. There have been no changes in offline marketing though we are seeing a slight decrease in visitor arrivals (-5%) and higher hotel room rates.
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Is there a chance that Google's not set may be affecting direct traffic numbers?
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Any other thoughts on how we can figure out why brand traffic is dipping?
Thanks
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- Has the level of (not provided) increased in rough proportion to the drop in branded traffic?
- Have you double checked you are ranking #1 (or same position) for all your branded keywords?
- Are alternative Adwords ads sitting above your results (apparently 40% of people don't know they are ads - which should now change with the distinct yellow 'Ad' icon)?
- Are you still strongly competing in your market?
- Is it just brand traffic, have you analysed other keywords?
- is your branding looking like 'keywords' used in anchor text - small chance Google might see it that way?
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Hey Omar,
Direct traffic isn't Google's traffic. Direct means when the user has no referrer, most likely accessing your site by typing the URL.
The "not-provided" accesses can be found under Traffic Sources -> Google Organic
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