Hey all! We are seeing a significant dip in the direct traffic for one of our sites in the last 2-3 weeks. I am trying to find the root-cause. Here is what I checked so far: • Links => To confirm we haven’t lost a link from a major site + for any broken link • Search Console => For any manual penalty. • Keyword Rankings => I believe this is not even relevant as I am looking for reasons related to direct traffic. I still checked. • Seasonality => The August seasonality was before the timeframe we started seeing the dip. • Device => The primary dip is direct traffic on mobile devices. What else should I look for? Also, is there a better way to dissect and analyze the dip in the direct traffic? Appreciate any help on this. Thanks!

Did you stop ads spend recently? Direct traffic is a component of branding (through social media, ads, podcast, Press release). Just check these itineraries too.

Thanks @Ashkar Gomez - The ad spend is more or lese similar. Not much changed there.

You need to understand why users were coming directly to your mobile devices first. What were the possible ways that was happening. And what has changed. There could be numerous reasons. Have you added any utm parameters to certain places. Has something changed on the product front. Is there a change on other parameters. Has something changed on the mobile adaptabilty of the webite. Was there any update made. Is the tracking firing properly. Has something changed on competitor front.

Great points. I’ve seen this happen before, and it could be that your team’s visits are messing with the direct traffic numbers. If you haven’t excluded internal traffic, it might be skewing the data. I’d double-check if the visits from your team (like from your office’s IP or their locations) are being filtered out in GA or whatever tool you’re using. It’s a common thing that gets overlooked sometimes.