Direct Traffic has Drastically Increased
-
Hi,
I have noticed in Google analytics that direct traffic of one of my website is increased drastically. I didn't participate in Email Marketing or any other paid campaigns however direct traffic is continuously increasing. I checked all sources, locations, browsers, filters etc but didn't get any findings.
Please help.
-
Hi Ruchi,
Take a look at this article that shows you how to add an exclude filter in GA that will exclude spam traffic from your reports: https://www.optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-removing-referrer-spam-google-analytics/
You can also set up a second filter to make sure that the traffic hitting your site is actually trying to access your host name as opposed to hitting your GA tracking code. Check out this article to see how to do that: https://www.distilled.net/resources/quick-fix-for-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/
We had a bunch of ghost spam and referer spam on our sites hit by free-share-buttons and free-social-buttons. These 2 filters knocked those numbers out of our reports. The crazy thing is trying to explain to your client that those visits are not real visits and that some aren't even hitting your server, they are just hitting your GA code. Once you put in these 2 filters you can see your true traffic. Keep an eye on your refer info to add new spam referers as they appear in your reports.
Once you see your true traffic, you will also get better metrics for your bounce rate and time on page etc...
Hope that helps! Message me if you need help setting up a filter.
Cheers!
-Erick -
Ok David.
Thanks for you time. Much appreciated.
-
That almost certainly indicates Spam to me, there isn't much more of an indication for Direct traffic.
I'd suggest applying the filter and seeing what happens over the next couple of days and if it is still happening would require further investigation.
-
Bounce Rate is 97.32% with 00:00:18 avg session duration.
-
What sort of bounce rate are you getting from the Direct Traffic?
-
Thanks for your respond. I have crosschecked and found no spam traffic. You can check the snapshot of the traffic.
-
If the bounce rate is incredibly high this could be a form of spam, it has been on the rise recently.
The way to filter it out of your analytics is to create an 'Include' filter.
You can read a MOZ blog post on it here with instructions on how to create the filter: https://moz.com/blog/stop-ghost-spam-in-google-analytics-with-one-filter
We have used it and it worked for us
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Bing Referral Traffic
We do not get referral traffic from Google, only organic. Why do we get both organic and referral traffic from Bing?
Reporting & Analytics | | Mike.Bean0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
Traffic Drop Observations: Google UI, Mobilegeddon
Our traffic has dropped 25% in the last 3 weeks while maintaining our keyword rankings. At first, we thought it was due to the simultaneous change in Google UI where they removed the separators between ads and organic results. However, now, we have also noticed that our user devices have gone from ~ 50% desktop/50% mobile to 20% desktop/80% mobile. Just food for thought ...
Reporting & Analytics | | Humanovation0 -
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 -
SEO Working GREAT! Although Keyword Rankings Only Directing to Home Page.
Since I've become a fellow MOZer I've seen an increase on my sites and proud to say that ALL of my clients have now accomplished 1st page rankings on at least 2 of their top 3 keywords. Yes, I am as stoked as them. Although I am a bit worried because as I rank keywords and test them on Google and engines alike all of our rankings direct to the homepage. I am essentially new to SEO. So as happy as I am to be doing something right I'm worried I'm losing the end user. By having them need to Search our site/menus/blog for the keywords/phrase that got them to us will turn most searchers away. They want the content now. What am I doing wrong? My pages are pretty specific so I never cared to use rel-canonical's...I dont have duplicate content, other than your typical footer/side bar consistent info. So I'm curious where I've gone wrong. Little history on my sites: I Use Joomla 2.5 & 3.x. I manage seo details through sh404seo. I've cleaned all duplicates I can up other than what these dynamic cms generate by just using one. I've done fairly well and all my pages rank A for moz's onpage grader for the keyword optimized around. Any help is appreciate, THANK YOU!
Reporting & Analytics | | Funk-Creative-Media0 -
Rank #1 for a 110,000/month query search, but barely any traffic?
Hi guys, As it says in the title, we've recently reached the absolute #1 position for a certain key phrase in the travel industry which the Google Keyword Tool tells me averages 110,000 local (165,000 global) searches a month... however we have received barely any traffic at all over the past TWO months for it and I'm trying my best to determine why. We've checked on multiple different devices with all forms of personalisation off, different browsers, 3G connections as opposed to office Wi-FI etc. and it still returns us as the #1 rank. Meta descriptions and title tags are pretty much pristine if I don't say so myself, however what should be a very lucrative key phrase is currently returning little to no traffic results. Has anyone had experience in a similar situation to this? Any possible causes that I might be missing? Would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | ExperienceOz0 -
Site Crash Effect On Traffic
All, I manage a site that unfortunately crashed due to a server issue in late October for about 3 hours. Prior to the crash, traffic was the best it had ever been in the 3+ year history of the site. As you might expect, since the crash traffic has gone gradually down and is now about 15% off pre-crash numbers. I understand that when a site crashes, it disrupts the crawling process and can disrupt traffic (in my case rich snippets were thrown off for days) but would love to hear experiences any of you have had in similar situations. How much did traffic drop after a crash? When did it recover? Other thoughts? Thanks, John
Reporting & Analytics | | JSOC0 -
Drop in google referral traffic
Hi guys, As we know, GA shows google as traffic source in two ways: google / organic for organic searches and google.TLD / referral for everything else: google groups, base.google.com, static pages, google reader, google image search, google search appliance/mini. What we noticed is that around Oct 20th there's a huge drop of google.TLD / referral traffic to our site. Do you experience something similar? I couldn't find anything Google-related that happened around this specific date. We use GSA for our site search and I'm wondering if this could be the reason - maybe someone from our development team made changes to GSA settings that affected this traffic source. Looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | lgrozeva0