Traffic and Its Sources

In addition to direct and organic traffic, you should realize the difference between other sources and get to know with their classification and how free traffic generator bots work. Such web analytics tool as Google Analytics use flow charts and algorithms based on URL's and referring website parameters; these are they that define the traffic source. Here is a full list of sources with their features:

• Direct – Any type of unknown source or referrer that generates traffic on website;
• Organic – Traffic type that is earned organically, not paid from different search engines;
• E-mail – Traffic tagged with the help of e-mail parameters and so earned due to e-mail marketing;
• Referral – Traffic received when a user discovers you on other resources, not major search engines;
• Social – Traffic from different social networks like Twitter, Facebook, etc.;
• Paid search – Traffic got due to paid advertising in search engines like Google AdWords or similar platforms;
• Generated Traffic (Fake Traffic) – Traffic generated by diverse click farms or traffic bots generators. Could be paid or free of charge;
• Other – Traffic tagged as ‘Other’ in your URL parameter because it doesn’t refer to other sources.

It’s noteworthy that fake traffic is aimed at getting revenue and creating artificial inflates. Thus, it increases the site’s audience. This source might be useful in the following cases:

• If you want to generate traffic to websites in the form of hits, this method will do for you.
• In case with hits for Google Analytics, this variant might be more challenging. Still, Headless Chrome or PhantomJS will improve the situation.

What’s more, website owners are always interested in the ways to use a free traffic generator bot. For this, fake traffic might be really useful if to take into account its features on the whole. Most advertising companies consider any type of traffic a fake one. According to stats, this number may reach up to 50%. Trying to get any type of traffic, website owners realize that a small percent of traffic might be real. Another part of it will be fake meaning that it’s another computer (not the person) that looks at the site.   

Launching a new website, social media and advertising content are used. When more traffic is required, you can pay for traffic to Google, Facebook and so on. It’s a real traffic when users look through your site. If some portal becomes less popular, cheap traffic sources like a fake traffic generator bot may assist.

As we’ve become acquainted with all types of web traffic, let’s analyze 2 significant sources: direct and organic ones.

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is known as traffic from visits, it has nothing in common with referring sites. The referrer appears when a viewer follows a link from one site to another. These resources can be as big search engines, so small blogging portals, social media, and other platforms with URLs. Direct traffic is received when there’s no referring link.

According to a traditional approach, this traffic is attributed when users enter the URL or click on the link that was bookmarked. Still, a modern tendency of direct traffic looks a bit different. That’s because the number of visits in case with this traffic grows with regard to the raise of organic traffic. ‘Can it traffic my website free of charge?’, you may ask. Yes!

To understand this discovery, Groupon tested it by trying to de-index its website for 6 hours. After it, it concluded that 60% of direct traffic was organic. It confirmed that de-indexing the site and stopping organic traffic had influence on direct traffic.

Why do more websites see this correlation?

Let’s turn to direct traffic reasons to get the answer:

• Customers. Do your clients log at a customer website? That’s who is guilty of it! In this case, you’re not able to filter traffic correctly. So, you have to set up views in Google Analytics and examine stats without this traffic.
• Internal staff. In most cases, company employees use the resource, but their IPs aren’t filtered from the statistical report. Therefore, you’d better do it right now to see real web analytics.
• Clients’ e-mails. It’s a standard case when e-mail clicks from sites such as Thunderbird or Outlook aren’t regarded as referring data. You should analyze traffic at the time when the e-mail was sent to identify whether it was the e-mail that caused a spike or not. 
• Actual direct traffic. It describes the situation when users already know your brand and so enter your link in the browser or turn to your resource with the help of bookmarks. It goes for already well-known or famous companies that try to increase traffic to websites free of charge.
• Clicks in apps or software. Such programs as Skype or news applications operate as direct traffic since they don’t pass referring data. The best method to analyze it is to collect all site links where your site may be presented, including software and apps.
• Mobile traffic. In the experiment above, Groupon proved that both browser and device influence such an important parameter as web analytics. Mobile devices ensured 50% of direct traffic when the resource was de-indexed while desktop gadgets provided 10-20%. As a result, as the number of mobile users increases, we will most likely notice direct traffic rose because of organic search traffic.
• Secure and non-secure websites. Google is becoming more and more interested in secure sites. They represent services with ‘https’ in their links. That’s why traffic that goes from a secure portal to a non-secure one may not pass referral data. To correct this and become secure, you should update your site with the help of effective SSL certificates.

For most resources, the number of 20% for direct traffic seems to be normal. This percentage may vary depending on true traffic sources and the way marketers actually track this parameter.

Thus, what’s about organic traffic and its peculiarities?

Organic Traffic

It constitutes the primary channel for site promotion and marketing. It presumes that visitors come from search engines like Bing or Google. This type of traffic doesn’t cover paid ads; still, organic traffic might be influenced by displays or advertising as in positive, so negative manner.

On the whole, people respect search engines and really like the phrase ‘Google it’. Their actions online are closely connected with search engine results. For this reason, displays, paid search, and offline ad campaigns can have impact on searches. They may as increase traffic to websites free of charge, so make it at small fees and additionally to the main sources.  

Some portals noticed negative aspects of Google layout changes of recent years, e.g. Wayfair saw 25% of desktop clicks and 55% ‒ mobile ones lost because of paid search results. Thus, these changes affected organic search traffic in general.

To sum it all up, organic traffic just like direct one disposes some areas that can’t be controlled or foreseen properly. Still, organic traffic is driven and provided by SEO in most cases. The more well-structured and categorized keywords you decide on, the more organic traffic you obtain. Resources oriented towards high-grade content creation and optimized for search results can boast of stable increase in organic search traffic. To add to it, they don’t face the problem of how to get the traffic of a website, they see real results and improved positions in search engines. It’s worth looking through your website keywords and high-ranked pages to discover more SEO possibilities every month.

Traffic types and data related to them represent a great way to take control over your website and follow marketing perspectives. When you want to promote the resource on a regular basis, traffic might become your working method to get real results and improve ROI. Spend some time to look at site traffic parameters and change them in accordance with trends and improvement reports.