Direct traffic.
I was scanning through our company’s website stats the other day and noticed quite a few visits came from direct traffic.
This typically means either these visitors typed in our web address in their web browser’s address bar or they have our site bookmarked.
At first glance this may appear to be useless information regarding your website and how people find you, but realize this: This is what you want to see!
Yahoo! doesn’t want to see people are finding their website through your website, neither does Google. What they want is every time someone thinks “I need to search for this on the Web,” they need to go to our site.
No referrers, no links, no tweets.
What is it then they strive for (and the reason why I like seeing direct traffic in my stats)?
Brand recognition!
November 20th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Hi John – That’s a really good point. It’s good to see that people are coming back – so long as it’s not just spammers. I even get searches for my name too – and because it’s my blog name it’s brilliant, because people actually remember it.
Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Does Your Business Really Understand People?
November 21st, 2008 at 8:54 am
Cath Lawson is definitely your brand. I know I equate it with Internet marketing and thought provoking business ideas.
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Hi John – thank you. That’s great to know.
Cath Lawson’s last blog post..How To Make Good Money In Terrible Times
November 29th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Good point, and thanks for reminding me. Google Analytics trracks that nicely, but I hadn’t looked at it in a while.
I was interested to see that the percentage of new visits within direct traffic was higher than I expected. I would have thought that this would be much lower than it is for referrals and search engine traffic, but Analytics says otherwise. I was also curious that the bounce rate wasn’t much different either.
Stats are great, but sometimes they do make us scratch our heads..
November 30th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Hi Tony. Oh they sure do make me scratch my head sometimes. Often times I’m sitting there thinking, “Ok, is that stat me on my own website . . . I think it is?” LOL
March 11th, 2009 at 10:07 am
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