Direct Traffic over-reported?

[oddnumber]

Good morning all, is anyone else noticing Direct traffic being over-reported in GW today? Currently, for our site, we've had more Direct traffic than PPC and Organic combined, if GA is to be believed...

[tryingtogrowsite]

Funny you say this, I am seeing the same. I find it difficult to believe I am getting more people coming to it from a bookmark or direct type-in than Google and other search engine combined.

[aristotle]

You should check your server logs to see what's happening.

[oddnumber]

Thanks chaps. I can't access my server logs immediately, so was wondering if this was an anomaly with GA reporting. I've noticed the magnitude of direct traffic growing, but never before has it eclipsed PPC & organic...

[not2easy]

There is a discussion about this here: [webmasterworld.com...]
It appears to be a GA issue.

[oddnumber]

There is a discussion about this here: [webmasterworld.com...]
It appears to be a GA issue.

Thank you - i think this may be a slightly different issue though, in that it's direct reporting that i think may be questionable rather than realtime.

I've drilled down to look at users > networks, users > city etc. and all looks genuine and not bot-like. Could be traffic that mis-labelled? Organic or referred rather than direct? Who knows?

[keyplyr]

GA can sometimes report bot traffic pretending to be human browsers as direct traffic. GA can't tell the difference if the spoof is well done.

So it is possible your pages were hit by an active bot.

Most of Your Traffic is Not Human [webmasterworld.com]

[tryingtogrowsite]

Yes, the pattern of these visits suggests they are human. They are appearing from different cities, different lengths, not just 0 seconds as many bots are often recorded. By the way, Statcounter is also recording them as direct, so maybe it isn't Google.