Direct flow secret 5 Direct Flow analysis method

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Direct flow is a mysterious black box in web analytics. At least until today, I always thought so. Because you're never going to be able to say. What traffic sources are specifically included in the direct flow (collection, window, IM, and other traffic sources). It also fails to subdivide the direct traffic as the search flow and recommended traffic. Therefore, when the direct flow is changed, we can hardly find the reason through the traditional method of subdivision by layer, nor can we provide effective suggestions and measures. So, do we really have nothing to do with direct flow? No, this article will use 5 methods to analyze the direct flow. Maybe these methods can also help you unlock the secrets of direct traffic.

What is the direct flow?

What is the direct flow? This is a problem that we have to figure out before we analyze it. If you don't know the definition of the direct flow, and the real content behind it. Then you can't analyze this part of the flow. Below is the definition of the direct traffic to the website in Google Analytics.

Direct flow: Click on the bookmark to come to your website or type your site visitor in the browser. Direct traffic may include visitors who are attracted by offline (i.e., publications, TV) campaigns.

This is ideally defined for direct flow. But in reality, the content of direct flow is much more complicated than that described in the definition. Direct traffic typically contains the following 3 categories of traffic.

1 Visitors directly enter the traffic generated by the URL in the browser's address bar.

2 Visitors click on the URL of the bookmark in the collection generated traffic.

3 of all kinds of information without or loss of source traffic, including: Flash ads, im tools, window ads and so on.

The above 3 types of traffic Although all unified is recorded as direct flow, but each type of traffic has its own causes and characteristics. And the reason and the characteristic are the important basis of analyzing the direct flow. After understanding the definition and classification of direct flow, we begin to combine the causes and characteristics of these flows to analyze the direct flow through 5 different methods.

Method one, subdivision direct flow Landingpage

One of the main methods is to directly input the traffic generated by the URL. Landingpage is the entry page for traffic into the site, the first page that visitors browse through the site. Although direct traffic is not a source of access information, but must have its own entry page. The different entry pages allow us to do a simple analysis of the different types of direct traffic.

1 Visitors directly enter the traffic generated by the URL in the browser's address bar.

This kind of direct flow landingpage most should be the homepage of the website. Because the first page of the domain name is the shortest URL in the entire site. When visitors are so dependent on the search engine today, if they have to remember a URL and enter the browser address bar for access. I think it must be the domain name of the website.

Therefore, the direct flow of landingpage is not the site's home page of that part of the flow, most of them are not directly input Web site visitors generated traffic.

2 Visitors click on the URL of the bookmark in the collection generated traffic.

The landingpage of clicking on a bookmark to visit a website is relatively complicated, because any page in the site may be collected by the visitor and accessed again. But we also have a way of identifying this type of traffic. I will give a solution at the end of the article.

3 Traffic with no or loss of source information.

The landingpage of traffic without source information is one of the most complex, but also because each page is likely to be the landingpage of such traffic. For this type of traffic in the method of no good solution, but we can landingpage in the larger number of promotional pages, feature pages found, and to find corresponding to the station outside the advertisement for inspection. Find out about the ad traffic that lost the source information.

Method Two, to analyze the access path of direct traffic

Method Two is also mainly aimed at direct how the Web site generated traffic. Direct flow in addition to their own landingpage, there are different paths. By subdividing the access path of the direct flow, we can find out why even a small class of traffic in the direct traffic has changed.

1 Visitors directly enter the traffic generated by the URL in the browser's address bar.

The same is true for visitors who enter the URL directly, but the purpose of each visitor is not the same. These purposes can be obtained by analyzing their access path. Here's an example when I find that the site's direct traffic is getting higher and the quality is getting worse. To the homepage of the site as a starting point, through the path analysis found that most of the new traffic has visited a site of a class page, and eventually left the site. It is easy to see the purpose of this kind of visitor with the content of this kind of page.

2 Visitors click on the URL of the bookmark in the collection generated traffic.

Through bookmarks and favorites to access the site's traffic can also use the path to analyze the purpose, but we need to accurately filter out this part of the flow. method to say the last.

3 Traffic with no or loss of source information.

Path analysis does not apply to the flow of lost source information because it has different sources of traffic and has no regularity. Here you can use the Bounce rate index to analyze the direct flow of this type of landingpage non-homepage. Because we know that the pure direct flow is the site of the highest degree of loyalty of those visitors. And because the loss of source information is divided into the direct flow of users with a great difference. Therefore, landingpage non-home direct traffic, the high jump rate of most of the information is not or lost source of traffic.

Method Three, the direct flow of the site search keywords

Method Three is suitable for the direct flow of various classifications. Want to know the direct flow of visitors to the purpose of the site? In addition to the analysis of the visitor's path, the best way is to analyze the direct visitor's site search keywords. Here you can use the Advanced group to classify the direct flow by the landingpage or bounce rate of the direct flow, then analyze the situation of the search in the station and the change of the keyword.

Method Four, the geographical distribution of direct flow

Method Four is mainly used to analyze the traffic generated by the direct input URL. Usually, when we carry out offline promotion and advertising, will result in direct input to the URL of the direct traffic growth (while SEO brand word traffic will also be affected). The geographical limitations of offline promotion and activities are more pronounced than those on the line. Therefore, by dividing the direct flow according to the region can get the reason of the flow change, at the same time can verify the effect of offline activities.

Method Five, direct flow of new and old visitors

Method Five is primarily for traffic generated through favorites access. But this is not the ultimate way to identify the collection flow. For direct flow, we can use the category of visitors to subdivide, the simplest classification method is the new visitors and return users. For users who use favorites to access a Web site, most of them should belong to a return visit (the visitor does not delete the cookie). So, how do you find that most of the new direct traffic is newly visited users, then they are less likely to be generated by the collection of traffic.

Ways to identify and identify all types of direct flow

There are five ways to analyze direct traffic, but most of them are for the traffic generated by the direct input URL. Do you have any good methods for collecting traffic and losing source information? The best way to distinguish between these two types of direct traffic is the traffic markers and the page tags. Do this work, the collection of traffic and loss of source information flow will not be mixed with direct traffic.

Add tags to URLs

One of the best ways to identify the flow of lost source information is to mark these flows. Manually identifying these promotional traffic is the most effective method when browsers and tracking tools do not get the source of the visitor correctly. Another benefit of this is that tagged traffic will be recorded separately as campaign traffic in the Google Analytics report. Instead of being confused with direct traffic. After all, the advertising flow and direct traffic in the characteristics of the visit there is a big difference.

Create a Shadow Page

The second way to identify traffic is to create shadow pages, and sometimes, because of SEO and other reasons, we can't modify existing pages and URLs. We must also distinguish between the spread of traffic and the natural flow of the page. The best way to do this is to copy a shadow page. By recording the flow of Shadow page to distinguish the effect of different channel flow.

URL automatically add parameters

Automatically adding a parameter to a URL is another way to add markup to a URL. This approach is mainly for IM-class chat tools. Many times, visitors will send the site URL to their friends or QQ group. The traffic is recorded as direct traffic when other visitors click on the URL to visit the site. The URL automatically adds a parameter by automatically adding an identifier to the end of the URL when the visitor duplicates the URL in the browser's address bar and sticks it again. Differentiate it from the original target page. In this way, when we see a target URL with an identifier in the report, we can tell that they are not actually direct traffic.

URL to automatically add parameters to the method is very simple, just want to add a paragraph of JS at the bottom of the site page can do this work. There are now free tools available, and it regularly reports on the number of times the user has copied the sticky post, the specific page the behavior produces, and the source of such traffic.

Favorites UTM Tags

The Favorites UTM tag is a way I come up with automatically adding parameters to the URL. Interested friends can write a code test under. The idea is very simple, when the visitor clicks the website page the collection button, automatically produces a paragraph with the UTM mark the URL,

For example: http://bluewhale.cc/?utm_source=Bookmark&utm_medium=Direct&utm_campaign=Bookmark_traffic

When a visitor collects a link with a UTM tag and accesses it again, we can tell if the visit came from the favorites.

--"All articles and pictures are copyrighted by the Blue Whale (Wang Yanping)." Welcome to reprint, but please note the transfer from the "Blue Whale website Analysis blog." 】——

Read more:http://bluewhale.cc/2011-03-19/direct-traffic-secret.html#ixzz1hdvrhv00