I have been speaking about that dreaded Direct as a traffic source in Google Analytics for a long time. It was actually sparked because of a conversation with someone who was being trained to become a growth hacker, what she had learned was to see direct traffic in Google Analytics as brand traffic, typed-in traffic. My first reaction was, no you can’t do that, but then I had to figure out how to properly define direct traffic.
Direct traffic is any pageview sent to Google Analytics without either a ‘http referrer’ or UTM tracking applied.
Arnout Hellemans, 2019
There are quite a few fixes, some of which I shared in a talk on how to fix Google Analytics at InOrbit 2019.
How to fix Google Analytics traffic sources and channels
Time needed: 15 minutes.
How to fix Google Analytics traffic sources
1. One UTM naming convention. Create one single naming convention (and make them all lowercase).
2. UTM tag all non-http referrers. UTM tag your feeds, email campaigns, PDF downloadable assets (case studies, spec sheets, whitepapers), Open Graph URLs, and employee signatures.
3. Create a separate Google Analytics view. Make sure to set up a test view before you start messing about with channel groupings.
4. Set up channels. Set up channels to group the different traffic sources together for easier reporting.
5. Finally set the default channel grouping in the same way. Make sure to overwrite the default channel grouping when you are happy with the new one.
