Traffic Source Trends

Google Analytics provides reporting on various Traffic Sources.  If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, we are able to report via the Google Analytics API on the Traffic Source Trends including:

• Direct traffic that includes visitors recruited via offline (i.e. print, television) campaigns. This source also includes visitors that directly type the domain name into the browser or have the website bookmarked.  Depending on campaign tracking, it is also likely that visitors from email campaigns from non web-based email readers are reported here.
• Referring traffic shows the overall trends in traffic volume from referrals while the table lists the sites driving the trends.  If you really want the full referer URL including parameters in principle you can get that if you go for the “Referral” variable in profile filters. For example you can set up an Advanced Custom Filter to see the Full Referring URL.
• Paid Search traffic includes all identified paid search engine campaigns. Google AdWords provides the ability to link your account to Google Analytics. If you can not successfully link Google AdWords (or for other search marketing campaigns), you can use Campaign Tracking to identify Paid Search traffic.  Google provides a tool called URL Builder to help you generate UTM tags for tagging your URL links.
• Organic traffic shows how search engine traffic compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends while the table lists the search engines driving the trends.   In addition, you can see how traffic from search keywords compare to traffic as a whole to your site.   Organic is broken down into Google, Bing, Yahoo! and then Other; the current Market Share % is approximately 65% Google, 15% for both Bing & Yahoo! leaving 5% for Other search engines like Ask.com & AOL.com.

Traffic Source Trends starts by showing the Last Week (ending on Saturday) against the Previous Week to determine the Trend.   All Traffic Sources are displayed and reviewed to help identify the Total Traffic trend and how it relates to Organic Traffic.   Last Week traffic trends are also compared to the same week Last Year if Google Analytics data is available.  The Last 4 Weeks (ending on Saturday) are likewise compared to the Previous 4 Weeks across all Traffic Sources as well as compared to Last Year if Google Analytics data is available.