Reading the Google Analytics for this site, I noticed I was getting a few instances of direct traffic to The Story of Lune and Poncho. Three out of 14 total over the past month — interesting, but hardly scientific, so let’s look at my dad’s site ERBZine.com which gets about 1000 hits a day:

Direct Traffic Stats for ERBZine 1390: 1. Thark Gallery:

• Period: March 12 – April 11, 2010
• 444 Unique Pageviews
• 17 – Direct -  Internet Explorer:
• 6 – Direct – Firefox
• 2 – Direct – Opera
• 2 – Direct – Safari

Total Browser Stats:

• 218 visitors = 49.1% Internet Explorer
• 149 visitors = 33.6% Firefox
• 36 visitors = 8.1% Safari
• 35 visitors = 7.9% Chrome
• 5 visitors = 1.1% Opera

Direct Traffic Percentages

(percentage of each browser segment which yielded direct traffic)

• 17 / 218 = 7.8% : Internet Explorer
• 6 / 149 = 4.0% : Firefox
• 2 / 36 = 5.5% : Safari
• 2 / 5 = 40% : Opera
• 0 / 35 = 0% : Chrome

Again, we’re working with some fairly low numbers. I’m going to ignore the Opera stat for now, since it represents only 5 visitors. The Chrome stat is interesting though, as it yielded no direct traffic. The Internet Explorer segment had more direct traffic than Firefox.

About Direct Traffic

Now, direct traffic has traditionally meant that someone has either:

• Typed in the address by hand directly
• Used a bookmarked link to your page
• Clicked a link to your page in an email message (webmail clients will include a referrer, however)

Note: a great book with a lot of information about web traffic is Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik. I found it a very useful book, and very easy to read — I highly recommend it.

I had a hard time believing this accounted for all the direct traffic we were getting to this page, so I did a bit of searching on the topic. First I researched a bit about what direct traffic means. Okay, possibly the referrer information is being suppressed, although if you’re going to block referrer data, why not block Google Analytics altogether?

Another explanation seems a bit more plausible though: I read that IE passes no referrer if the click from the referring page opens in a new window. This may account for the higher percentage of IE direct traffic.

Conclusion

Well, I’m still as confused as before, but have some things to think about:

• Is IE really not passing referrer data when the link opens in a new window?
• Is Chrome that much more dependable for providing the referrer? Is this because Google wants to provide better stats?
• Why the direct traffic from Firefox? Referrer suppression through a plugin? Bookmarks?
• If the referrer info is getting lost, what are some ways we can try to maintain it? Setting it in the querystring of the link, for example.

References

• What does the Direct referrer mean? – IE passes no referrer if the click from the referring page opens a new window.
• Reasons for “Direct Traffic” in referrer reports -
• Setting the referrer through the querystring – my question on the Google Analytics Help Forum.
• Overriding the Referrer Datum – use the _setReferrerOverride function to set the referrer value based on a Cookie.

Web Analytics References

Two books I’ve read, and highly recommend for web analytics strategies are:

• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
• Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity