Organic Traffic going to Direct? How to find the ultimative proof

[ennovators]

Hi there,

a few months ago we had a new site launch. As we operate internationally, visitors in different countries do get redirected to the specific country subfolder. e.x. domain.com/it

Since site launch. Direct Traffic is performing really really well(almost to good to be true) while organic is doing decent but not more. I'm quite sure, that a part of direct belongs to the organic channel. Though now I need strong arguments to fight against our own web development team.

Do you have any suggestions, where and how I can find strong evidence of my hypotheses?

Thanks in advance

[ClaytonJ]

I also recall (I think) Rand stating (in one of those top 10 type lists) that one of the big things for SEO 2015 would be the correct re-categorization of direct to search.

Effectively exactly what you intuitively think is correct.. that Direct traffic is over compensated for in respect of Search.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi James,

Certainly not the first time I have come across this, and the last time I directed someone to an article on Search Engine Land that goes through this. It might have some interesting insights in there for you.

Everyone knows that browsers don’t always report where visitors came from when they arrive at a website. When they don’t report where they were in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) referrer header, often the traffic is considered “Direct” — which really means, “we have no clue where they came from, maybe they typed the URL in or hit a bookmark.”

-Andy