Direct traffic in Google Analytics 4 (and how to fix it)

if you have a lot of direct traffic in your G4 property then this video is exactly what you need here I will explain what direct traffic is what affects it and the most common fixes also at the end of this video I will share additional resources there are several ways how Google analytics determines the traffic Source or in other words from where your visitor landed on your website the first way is the refer also known as document. refer it is a global JavaScript variable that shows the URL or at least the domain of the previous page where the visitor was here's an example I am on Google Search and the domain here is www google.com and if I click this link then I can open developer tools go to console and here if I enter document. refer you will see the domain of the previous page even though the domain here is support.google.com so if Google analytics was active on this site it would attribute this new session to Google organic search but if the visitor lands on your website and the URL contains UTM parameters such as UTM Source UTM medium UTM campaign then Google analytics will use those to determine the traffic source for example here I am again on the support page and even though the refer is available and it is www.google.com the URL contains two UTM parameters UTM medium is social and UTM source is Facebook then Google analytics will attribute this session to Facebook and there are also some other URL parameters for example GCL ID which is Google click ID so if the visitor comes to your website and the refer is google.com and the URL contains Google click ID it means that the visitor landed on your website by clicking a paid ad in Google search but if the visitor lands on your website for example for the first time and there is no refer there are no UTM parameters and there are no additional other parameters then that kind of session will be attributed to direct because Google analytics does not know where the visitor is coming from in other words in many cases direct means that Google analytics just does not know the traffic source of course in some situations the visitor really directly came to your site for example maybe the visitor entered the URL in the address borrow the browser but that does not happen as often as you might think in many other cases direct means that ga4 just has no idea where the visitor is coming from and in this video I will show you several reasons why maybe you don't have the refer or maybe you lost the refer somewhere along the way first let's take a quick look where you can find Direct Traffic one of the places is the report section here you can find the traffic acquisition report and then in one shape or form you will see direct traffic that depends on what kind of Dimension are you using if you're working with Channel groups then you might see just the word direct if you switch for example to session Source medium then direct traffic will be displayed as direct none because Google analytics does not know the medium of the traffic and the source is displayed as direct so what are some of the possible reasons why you might lose refer for example or maybe you might not even have it at all this can be caused by redirects between https and HTTP and I'm talking about the very first part of any page URL here's an example I am on a website which is using https if I'm on this page and I click on a link that also contains https then I can open developer tools enter document refer and I will see that the refer is persistent so in this case if the session starts on this website the session will be attributed to this URL right here but if I click on a link that is HTTP while I am still on https let's see what happens when I click on HTTP I am eventually still redirected to https so the journey looks like this I am on https then I click HTTP and I am redirected back to https if I check the refer now you will see that it is empty so if I as a visitor land for the first time on this page by clicking this link then the session will be attributed to direct because the refer is no longer available the only fix for this would be to make sure that the links where your website is mentioned would contain https so maybe you have access to those other websites so you should update the links or maybe you can contact those third party websites if it is possible and update the links to include https then another reason why you might lose refer is Cookie consent popup imagine this situation you land on a website from Google search and the visitor sees this cookie consent popup the refer is available on this page however the cookie consent popup is barely visible and in fact I would be able to keep browsing the site by clicking other links now if I ignore this cookie consent popup and go to the next page the refer of Google search disappears and then if I click let's say accept all on that second page the session will start but since the refer is lost the session will be attributed to direct so a solution to avoid this would be to make the cookie consent pop up bigger block the website content and force the visitor to interact with it to either reject tracking or accept tracking I never recommend using cookie bars like at the bottom of the page or at the top of the page because they they're not that visible the best option would be to have some popup or something that blocks the content and forces the visitor to interact with the popup before going to the second or the third page of your website also I've seen some C canm popups that refresh the page or redirect a visitor somewhere after the consent is given in some cases such redirects can also lose the traffic source so ideally you should use some popup that blocks the page and then if visitor clicks I accept no redirect or no refresh happens and the visitor just keeps browsing while your tracking codes are activated then another reason is related to PDFs that maybe your business offers and maybe those PDFs have links that redirect visitors to your website so if the visitor clicks a link in PDF and that link does not contain any UTM parameters then this kind of session will be attributed to direct a solution here would be to edit your PDF files so so that all links redirecting to your website would contain UTM parameters like in this case I have UTM Source UTM medium and UTM campaign because if I click this link the visitor lands on a website and then Google analytics will look at these etm parameters and will attribute the traffic source to analytics Mania ebook and UTM medium will be PDF then maybe Google analytics is not installed on all pages of your website so this would require a more thorough audit to check if Google analytics is actually activated on all pages because imagine this the visitor lands on your website from Google search and the visitor lands on example.com hello but on this page there is no Google analytics tracking code installed which means that the session is not tracked here then the visitor goes from this page to another page where Google analytics 4 is present however the refer of wwwg google.com is lost on this page the refer is example.com hello which is the same domain as right here in that case you analytics will start a session here but the traffic Source will be direct because the domain of the refer which is this one is the same as it is right here so it's crucial to make sure that Google analytics is installed on all websites if you're using Google tech manager to install ge4 then you must make sure that Google tech manager is installed on all pages then another thing that might be causing loss refer is the attribute called real non- refer in backlinks so if there is some third party website that links back to your site but that link contains no refer it means that when the visitor lands on your website the refer will be empty so if possible maybe you can contact the Web Master of that third party website and ask them to remove the no refer parameter in fact there are more reasons why refer might be lost because of a thing called refer policy so if you want to learn more about refer in general then I will post a link to a blog post below the video another thing also relates to UTM parameters and if you are doing some email marketing and you're sending emails that contain links back to your site then you definitely must use UTM parameters for those links because if your links don't contain UTM parameters some sessions might be attributed for example to mail.google.com but in other cases those sessions might not have any referal value which means again direct traffic most modern email marketing platforms offer built-in features to generate UTM parameters but others might require you to manually add the parameters in the email content so keep an eye on that then it is also possible that you are incorrectly using unwanted referrals list in the admin panel of Google analytics 4 you can go to data streams click your website data stream and then click configure tax settings then you can click show more and select list unwanted referrals here you can enter the list of domains that you don't want to see as your referrals and usually this list contains domains belonging to payment gateways such as paypal.com or stripe.com or something like that but I've also seen some people using this feature to deal with bot traffic which is completely wrong so if you get some spam traffic from spam referral domains for example you know spam.com or whatever just coming up with some random names if you want to get rid of that spam traffic you should never enter that spam domain right here because if you do you will still be getting that traffic but instead of being attributed to spam.com that spam traffic will just become direct so never use the list of unwanted referrals to deal with Spam traffic because you're not solving the problem you're just hiding it under the rug then another reason why you might be having a lot of direct is if you're using separate G for properties for subdomains here's a situation let's say that a visitor lands on your website from Google search here we are looking at the www or the main website Google analytics property a is loaded and the session starts Google analytics properly attributes that this session is coming from Google organic but if during the same session the visitor goes to blog and on blog you have a different prop property this property was not installed on this website so it does not know that the visitor originally came from Google search therefore this property will track another new session and since the visitor is coming from example.com to example.com the traffic Source will be direct so normally if you want to track the user journey across multiple subdomains you should be using one G4 property and one data stream across all subdomains then another reason is related to cookie limitations and expiration you can do some things about it but in other cases you just have to accept the fact so here's an example let's say that you have a visitor who comes to your website from Google search and Google analytics is activated it properly attributes the session to Google organic now let's say that this visitor is using Apple Safari browser and on Apple Safari browser or iOS devices there is a thing called intelligent tracking prevention which sets the cookies to expire after 7 days and in some cases even after 24 hours so let's say that this visitor is using that device intelligent tracking prevention is active and then the visitor comes back to your website after one day directly so the cookie still has not expired and if the visitor let's say enters the example.com URL directly in the browser address bar you might think that this session will be attributed to direct but because of how attribution Works in Google analytics that Direct then will become the previous non-direct traffic which is Google organic so this second session will still be attributed to organic so this is okay this is expected but if the same visitor comes to your site let's say for the first time intelligent and tracking prevention is active and the first session is again properly attributed but if the same visitor comes back to your site by entering the URL directly in the browser only after 30 days then by that moment Google analytics cookie will be expired therefore the traffic Source will be direct in fact Google analytics will even treat this person as a new user even though it's the same user here and here so right now there is some workr for cookie expiration caused by intelligent tracking prevention and that involves using server side tagging but who knows what will happen in the future so this is something for you just to know but of course if you want to make your data more accurate then consider implementing service side tagging and in general if this kind of thing with attributions sounds confusing then take a look at my Google analytics for course where I talk much more about attribution but if on the other hand the users delete their cookies by themselves for example you know clearing everything in browser settings then there isn't much that you can do unless of course you have the login feature on your website then you could consider implementing user ID with Google analytics 4 and then the last thing to mention which happens rarely but it's still something that you should be aware of so sometimes very rarely ga4 processing errors happen and in this case I mean bugs so in late 2023 I know that there was a short period of time where G4 was falsely losing traffic source and a bunch of sessions were attributed to direct So eventually Google analytics fixed that but they did not reprocess the data that was already collected so people who were affected by this bug they had much more of direct traffic in their ge4 properties for that particular period hopefully now you have a better understanding about direct traffic if these Solutions did not help you I have a blog post with more suggestions I will post a link to it below the video also if you want to learn more about attribution and how G4 Works under the hood then take a look at my Google analytics 4 course I will also post a link to it below the video if you found this video useful hit the like button that will help me understand what videos do you like and what should I create in the future also if you want to learn more about Google tech manager or G4 then subscribe to this channel my name is Julius this is analytics Mania and I'll see you in the next [Music] video

Channel: Analytics Mania - Google Analytics & Tag Manager

Views: 5,516

Keywords: google analytics, direct traffic, google analytics 4, google analytics 4 reports, google analytics 4 tutorial, what is direct traffic, google analytics 4 tutorial reports, google analytics 4 reports tutorial, acquisition reports in google analytics 4, what is direct traffic in google analytics

Id: 4ztGY0ZwV2U

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2024