Understanding what counts as direct traffic in Google Analytics is just the first step. To make sense of your data and optimize your marketing efforts, you need to dig deeper. By examining the positive and negative causes of direct visits.
Positive causes of direct traffic
Not all direct traffic is bad. Certain shop types of direct visits can be a strong indicator of your brand’s reach. And your users’ engagement.
The following are positive reasons why people may come directly to your site:
Manually entering URLs and bookmarks
Sometimes users manually type your website URL into their browser. Or they click on a previously saved bookmark.
Why is it good?
It means you have created strong brand awareness and loyalty among your audience.
Let’s say someone regularly browses Apple’s website to check out its latest products. They’ve bookmarked the tab in Chrome. And they tap on it when they want to check out the newest releases.
GA will attribute your search as direct traffic.
This type of direct traffic from Google Analytics shows that the user is already familiar with Apple. And is interested enough to go directly to the source.
Manual input and bookmarks indicate that you have successfully raised awareness among your audience. They think of your brand first when searching for information or products in your niche. The lifetime value of those visitors can be huge.
Offline marketing and word of mouth
Your offline marketing efforts also positively contribute to direct traffic as they lead to manual URL entries.
Offline marketing can include:
- Print ads in magazines or newspapers
- Business cards or flyers handed out at events
- Promotional products with your URL or a QR code printed on them
- Word of mouth referrals from satisfied customers
It’s also a positive form of direct traffic, because offline exposure builds brand awareness . And credibility. When people hear about you through trusted channels, they’re more likely to remember your URL and visit you directly.
Negative causes of direct traffic
On the other hand, direct traffic can be a sign of technical issues. Or tracking gaps that hide your true traffic sources. This can skew your data. And make it difficult to understand your users’ journeys. And the impact of your marketing efforts.
Common negative causes of direct traffic include:
Untagged links in email campaigns
If your email links have issues with tracking parameters, GA4 will often count those clicks as direct traffic instead.
Let’s say you include a link to your latest blog post in your email newsletter. Like Sprout Social does here:
But let’s say you forget to tag it with the proper UTM campaign tracking parameters. A UTM code is a piece of text that you add to the end of a link’s URL. It allows you to track the performance and metrics of that specific link.
This added text helps you track and measure the performance of your email, social media, and other digital marketing campaigns.
This is what it looks like now:
Without this added text snippet, Google Analytics sees traffic from the link as a direct visit to your blog post URL.
What’s the problem? You’re not getting credit for the email marketing traffic you’ve worked hard to gain.
To avoid this problem, always include the relevant UTM tags in each link in your emails.
For example, a properly labeled link in an email campaign might look like this:
Consistent use of UTM tags helps GA4 correctly classify your email traffic. This gives you a much clearer picture of how well your email campaigns are driving engagement and conversions on the site.
The key is to plan a consistent naming convention and label each email link. With proper UTM tracking, you’ll have accurate data to optimize and prove the value of your email marketing efforts.
Trafficking of non-web documents and files
Non-web document links often show up as direct traffic in Google Analytics. Including PDFs, Word files, or even desktop applications,
For example, we included a button with a link in our Social Media Trends report :
By clicking on the link, the reader is taken to a landing page on the Semrush site. But links from these sources sometimes do not convey referral information.
Because?
Let’s say you’ve just published a research report with a link to your homepage. When someone clicks on that link, GA4 sees it as direct traffic since there’s no data from the referring website.
While this traffic is valuable (they’re interacting with your content), it’s not technically “direct.” Ideally, you’d know the true source.
Without tracking parameters, references to non-web documents muddy your data. And they make it difficult to understand user behavior and the impact of your content assets.
Reduce confusion by including UTM parameters in tagged links whenever possible. This will allow Google to obtain some referral data, even if the source is not traceable.
Blocking referral links and privacy settings
When a website blocks referral information or a user has strict privacy settings enabled, Google Analytics may incorrectly attribute traffic as direct.
Why does it happen?
Some sites choose to hide referral paths for a variety of reasons, such as maintaining privacy or preventing data leakage to third-party analytics tools.
Similarly, if a user has opted into “Do Not Track” or activated other browser privacy settings, referral data may be deleted.
Results? Sessions that GA should attribute to a specific referral source end up in the direct traffic bucket.
For example, let’s say a visitor clicks a link analyzing data to improve your online store marketing to your site from a forum with referrer blocking enabled. Even though that user came from the forum, GA4 will record the session as direct traffic. That’s because the referral information is missing.
While you can’t control the blocking of referrals from other sites or the privacy settings of each user, it’s important to be aware of this potential bias in your data.
Understanding the factors that can inflate direct traffic in Google Analytics allows you to analyze your acquisition reports more accurately. And avoid misinterpreting the numbers.
Migrating from to
Migrating your site from (non-secure page) to (secure page) is great for security, but if done incorrectly, it can wreak havoc on your referral data. And inflate direct traffic.
This is the problem.
You may have backlinks pointing to your site using the old URL. But if you don’t set up proper redirects, any traffic coming from those links will show up as direct in Google Analytics.
Why? Because referrer information cell phone number is lost when moving from a secure site to a non-secure site.
For example, let’s say you get a backlink from an site. A user clicks that link, but it points to the version of your page. When they land on your site, Google Analytics sees it as a new session without any referral information.
Use the Site Audit tool to find out if your pages are linking to pages.
First set up an audit project.