kortina's tumblog

Understanding Direct Traffic, re:Bit.ly

Bijan asked about what “Direct Traffic” in referral data means.  Here’s a quick summary:

Direct Traffic includes people clicking your link from:
* Desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Apple mail
* AIR applications like Tweetdeck or Twirhl
* Mobile apps like Twitterific or Blackberry Mail
* Chat apps like AIM
* SMS/MMS messages
Also includes people who saw your link and typed it directly into their browser.

Playing with bit.ly links and analyzing the referral data has given me a lot more insight understanding of direct traffic than I ever got from analyzing Google Analytics reports. I guess this is due to the fact that bit.ly URLs are used so often in client apps other than the browser.

There’s a bit more discussion of the referral data in the comments on Bijan’s post for those interested.

bijan:

That’s very interesting data. I’m curious to know more about the 800+ clicks coming from “No Referrer” at the bottom. I’ll have to dig into that one with the Bit.ly folks. (Update: John and Todd from Bit.ly gave “no refferrer” explaination in the comments. Thanks guys!)