(no referral)

Where are all these visitors from?

[Monkscuba]

Background info. We have a smallish site, getting about 7 - 9,000 visitors a month. Our site is ranked well in most SE's. We use "Urchin" for logging visitors.

Due to our high rankings, I would have though that most of our visitors would come from SE's, though we get a fair number of referrals from many web links to our site.

The % of visitors listed as (no referral) is always around 75%. I'm sure there's information about this somewhere, but..

Where are all these visitors coming from?
Could it be that some computers don't send referral information to Urchin? Is Urchin just not refined enough to determine the referral?

I find it unlikely that 75% are typing our address directly, though this must account for some visitors. Equally, some must come from emails as we often put a URL into an email reply to point people to the right page.

Are there better stats packages that would give more information? Knowing where the visitors come from is important and this is like being semi blind.

[Sinner_G]

Are there better stats packages that would give more information?

I guess the best thing to do is to look at your raw files (*.log). If there's nothing noted there, no stat software will tell you anything.

Sinner

[jim_w]

Is it possible that they are right clicking and opening a new browser?

[edit]or javascript opening a new window?[/edit]

[sugarkane]

Are you filtering out spider visits from your stats? If you get favoured by Google freshbot or some other busy spider, you could find your referral figures being skewed quite dramatically.

[jamie]

most people who surf from behind a firewall have their referer hidden.

so depending on your type of visitor this could account for some/lots visits:

e.g. we get lots of people looking in from work - most are on a broadband connection, which in an office environment will be firewalled. that could be one reason why lots of visitors appear 'magically' into the site ;-)

(we too are often mystified by the ammount of no-referers)