Thank you for the amazing answer Robert. I followed your advice and checked for the GA code. Fortunately it is indeed placed in the header before the /head code, and it is only placed once.

I'm very grateful for this information, for at least now I don't have to worry that we've somehow implemented GA incorrectly on our site.

You know what, that is a GREAT question. Maybe we should hire a professional to check up on our Analytics settings/scripts/installation to make sure it is all working properly.

Is there a special designation I should look for when hiring someone like that? Is there such a thing as a "certified analytics expert" or something?

Hi TakeshiYoung,

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question! When I was first presented this problem by my editor (who is trying to use GA), I thought the same thing as you -- that if GA couldn't find the info then it probably can't be found by any other tool.

However, my editor presented me with this example: one recent blog posts had 6,000 pageviews. Google showed referral data as:

• 5,000 (direct)
• 344 off.net.mk
• 113 facebook
• 21 feedly

Using another tool called Chartbeat on the same blog post, we got way clearer data:

• 3,410 from off.net.mk
• 1140 from fb
• 425 from feedly.

We think the 5,000 direct number from Google must be wildly inaccurate. How could 5,000 out of 6,000 pageviews be direct?

Hi Robert,

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question! Your rephrasing of my question is correct. Here's an actual example provided to me by our editor who is trying to figure this out.

For example, one recent blog posts had 6,000 pageviews. Google showed referral data as:

• 5,000 (direct)
• 344 off.net.mk
• 113 facebook
• 21 feedly

Using another tool called Chartbeat on the same blog post, we got way clearer data:

• 3,410 from off.net.mk
• 1140 from fb
• 425 from feedly.

We think the 5,000 direct number from Google must be wildly inaccurate. How could 5,000 out of 6,000 pageviews be direct?

I hope this helps!

Very often Google Analytics will show 50-90% of our referrers as (direct) which is not very helpful.

Are there other tools out there that will provide a clearer breakdown of what other websites are sending us our traffic?

Specifically, I want to be able to be able to tell who are the top traffic referrers to my top performing pages on my site for the last 30 days. (I want to be able to study this on a per-page basis.)

Thanks in advance!