Direct Traffic In Turtl

Direct Traffic in TurtlIn this document, we’ll explain what direct traffic is and how you can try to categorize those visits into the right channels.Contents

Thank you for reading Making the most of Turtl's analytics

What is Direct Traffic?

DEFINITION:

Turtl Analytics is similar to Google Analytics when it comes to direct traffic, which is defined as when “no information about the referral source is available, or when the referring source or search term has been configured to be ignored.”

Simple Scenarios

Reader types in the Turtl doc URL
Reader clicks on a bookmark to the Turtl doc

Some more scenarios

Reader clicks on the Turtl doc link in an e-mail from Outlook or Thunderbird or similar desktop software
Depending on your email marketing tool, traffic from your email marketing campaigns is often categorized as direct.
Reader clicks on a link in Skype or other desktop messengers, or Social Media that can’t be tracked, such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp
Reader clicks on a link in offline documents, such as PDF or Word documents.
Reader clicks on a link in any desktop software in general

Demystifying Direct Traffic

There are two things you can do in order to solve the direct traffic mystery.

1. For existing documents

If you’d like to breakdown what are the possible sources for your direct traffic, you can ask a few questions:

Are readers landing on Turtl docs that you’ve used in e-mail campaigns?
Are readers landing on Turtl docs to which there are links in your desktop or mobile software (for example, an intranet software)?
Are readers landing on Turtl docs that are only accessible to logged-in readers?

2. Going forward - UTM Campaign Tagging

Going forward, to have a better idea of the sources of your readers, we recommend that you use UTM tags.

This is something you can do for direct traffic that is under your control:

emails of all kinds,
links embedded in desktop software or mobile apps,
links in materials distributed as PDFs or other types of documents,
affiliate links, etc.

Tagging links with _utm parameters will supply Turtl Analytics with the referral data that accurately reflects the traffic source.

You can use Google’s URL builder tool to assist in this task. However, this will only apply for traffic going forward. To analyze prior direct sessions see solution #1 above.