Universal Analytics: Why does Google Organic appear as Direct traffic?

[Robbern]

Hi there,

When I enter the site via Google Search and follow myself via Real-Time Analytics I appear an organic visitor (which is good). When I browse and visit the site I still am an organic visitor. However, as soon as I fill in the contact form (gravity forms) and land on the "thank you page" I appear as a direct visitor with Google as the source. Since I have the thank you page set-up as a goal, Analytics incorrectly attributes these conversions to the direct medium instead of the organic medium. The tracking code has been installed on all the pages and all conversions are being recorded. What is going on?

[EGOL]

The form is probably obscuring your history and making you look like a new visitor with no attributable origin.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Are you sure that the source is Google and the medium is direct in this case? That sounds really strange as it could be that somewhere the redirect is using UTM tags. Normally the source would be empty if the medium is direct.

[TimHolmes]

I think it may be down to the headers which are being passed by the browser when the form is submitted. Could it be that the third party plugin from gravity forms, performs a funny post and redirect when the submission is made. This will then return the visitor as direct as opposed to organic.