Hi,

I've spent the last few days promoting my new site by submitting articles to sites like ezine, goarticles and by posting a few comments to some blogs with links. I'm getting around 10 visits a day from this but for some reason most of them are showing as 'Direct Traffic' in Google Analytics?

What does this mean?

Also, Google Analytics is only aggregated data...is there any free software which can show individual visitor paths?

Thanks.

WOW!!! 10 visits a day.


Why is it direct traffic?? BECAUSE IT IS!! ie: It hasn't come via a Search Engine!!!

Well yeah obviously, I know 10 aint much but it's better than the 0 I was getting 2 days ago.

Surely they should be showing as coming from referring sites though? (Some seem to, but most don't even though they must be coming from these sites)

Isn't direct traffic when somebody types in your web address or has bookmarked your site and comes directly?

Also can you recommend a better way to analyse traffic on an individual level?

Cheers.

Well, when a user directly come to your site through typing or clicking you link is knwn as direct traffic and that's why it shows it as direct traffic.

Just read your site logs

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Just read your site logs

How do I do this? Is there a certain file that I need to look for?

No idea, what tools does your hosting provider have for log analysis?


but they will be [datetime].log

Direct traffic come from someone 'directly' typing the url in their browser, if it was referred traffic, analytics would show it as 'referred' and where it came from.

My advice is to stay away from the stats for awhile, and continue to write content and promote your site, try to limit yourself to stats only once a week, it is too easy to get addicted to it.

Surely they should be showing as coming from referring sites though? (Some seem to, but most don't even though they must be coming from these sites)

Ok so you have only ASSUMED that it is coming from your comments.

So it probably is genuine direct traffic then (or click-through traffic not carrying a referrer)

If it is referral traffic or search engine traffic Google Analytics will show them as referral traffic or SE traffic. Direct traffic happens when a user type your site directly on the browser. Check your logs, sometimes you may given your URL to friends or your existing users may logging to your site.

direct traffic is some one type url in address bar and come to your site. not the click on link

Actually, "Direct Traffic" is a bit of a misnomer, or better explained as wishful thinking.

Technically, it means: "Gee, we have no idea where or how this person got to your site, but they got there."

In other words, there was no signal recorded. So the person "most likely" either typed your url in, or used a bookmark.

For example, the person could have come through a redirect that was too quick for the tracking program to pick up.

The point is that people might have come into your site through a link or technology which was not picked up, perhaps a mobile device, for example.