Reasons Behind Direct Traffic Being Reported Down

[JesterMagic]

My direct traffic has always been a fairly steady percentage of my organic traffic. On July 30th I lost about 50% of my direct traffic according to Google Analytics.

Has anyone else notice this? Direct traffic is mainly generated from people visiting your site using bookmarks or typing in the url but doesn't Google searches on Apple devices appear as direct traffic now?

[netmeg]

I posted a link in this post, but iOS traffic is starting to come back.

[webmasterworld.com...]

I haven't had time to do any deep diving, but from what I hear, it's not necessarily *all* back, but starting to come back with iOS6 and iOS7. The (not provided) issue notwithstanding, of course.

[venti]

Yep, I observed the same thing. I consistently see odd swings with the reported direct referrals.

[Lexur]

Keep in mind that Google Analytics is a Google service reporting about its services and the services of competitors for your website so you should take that numbers with a pinch of salt.

[turbocharged]

The Provo, Utah datacenter was down yesterday for half the day (maybe longer). EIG (Endurance International Group), which owns BlueHost, HostGator and HostMonster, has many servers in this datacenter. The result? Many, and I mean many, websites were down. If any of these sites sent you referral traffic in the past, and were down yesterday, you would see a decline in referral and erroneously reported direct traffic.