Direct Channel Numbers are Higher than expected

[DhanA2]

Hi Team,

Please Help me with the following doubts.

1. My Direct Numbers are so high compare to other channel that is not expected coz most of the traffic should comes from campaigns

2. When we break down to understand the direct, I can see other domains like Facebook and google. Is it right way to breakdown and if yes why we are getting other domains in Direct channel.

Pleas find my Marketing channel processing rule order for  your reference.
3. Do we need work anything on Internal URLs, Since we are tracking two different site(sitea.com and siteb.com) of the same org in this one report suite, Internal ULRs

I would like to know the why it is happening, what could be the root cause for these?

Direct Config:

Internal URL Filter setup:

Thanks!
CCing Top contributors for faster Response: 
@arunpatidar 
@Jennifer_Dungan 
@yuhuisg 

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Hi, you can correlate Marketing Channel to Referrer in the way you showed, but you need to be aware that you could be mixing 2 different attributions... which can cause some discrepancies...

Marketing Channel is likely set up to 30 Day or 7 Day attribution, but Referering Domain will be Visit...  That said, because you are looking at "Direct" Marketing Channel, which should be overwritten by your other Marketing Channels (i.e. Search or Social), then it's strange that you are seeing those referring domains...

I wonder if it's the "First Page of the Visit" rule that is causing issue in your Direct Rule... 

Remember that a lot of users could do a Google Search, click on an item (triggering a first page view on your site), then back out, then click on a second item (this will not be the first page of the visit), click back again, and continue to click through to multiple pages into your site....

That said, those are the rules that are "default".. so possibly one of the rules above it is also looking at "First Page of Visit" and causing ripples down your rules...

So that maybe someone did come directly to your site, then decided to try and use Google search to find additional content... or was using multiple tabs and found content from social media within the same visit period...

I would start by checking the rules on your Search and Social channels first... trying to identify why those referrers aren't being caught by the above rules.

[DhanA2]

Hey @Jennifer_Dungan 

Thanks for your detailed  explanation,

Please review the requested screenshots. search and social

Also, I'm suspecting a behavior of website, Once landed on website there will be one pop-up will appear and collect user input then it reloads a page once again. Will  this cause any issue or inflate direct counts?

Thanks,

[Josh__Stephens]

Have you looked at breaking out Direct traffic by the Marketing Channel Detail (page) in this case?  You might see an unexpected page that's driving a lot of the Direct traffic and might help in troubleshooting any implementation or other issues.

For your scenario above, I'd suggest replicating the visitor behavior from a few different browsers.  Try to visit at an off peak time or some other way you can differentiate yourself and see how those visits are being bucketed.

Here's part 4 in a blog series that's really great on marketing channel rules that may be helpful:  https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2014/11/12/refresher-on-adobe-analytics-mktg-channels-reports-part... (for the previous parts you may need to do some googling as they're a bit old and not at their original URLs)

[DhanA2]

Hi @Josh__Stephens  @Jennifer_Dungan , When i break it down by marketing channel details. None is the major contributor here.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Is it possible the incoming campaign traffic is going through a redirect? Losing both the referrer headers and the campaign codes? 

[DhanA2]

@Jennifer_Dungan  Yes There is a chance I agree with you!, 

During this Investigation, I found something interesting, I Hope this could be culprit if yes how can we resolve  this duplicated ecid visitors.

[Josh__Stephens]

Hi @DhanA2 ,it's weird that you're seeing None for the Marketing Channel Detail.  For Direct your rules are set to put Page as the detail.  Can you double check that your landing pages are named and tagged correctly? 

Like @Jennifer_Dungan mentioned, I've seen redirects where the query string parameters weren't passed and this caused many direct visits.  Try a redirect and watch the network tab and your final URL to see if you lose the campaign code as you go.

do you know what ID is used for unique visitor variable in your implementation?  I haven't worked with this, but more details are here.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hmm that duplicate visitor ids issue is odd...  

I've also never used the "Specify Unique Visitor Variable", but this is more if you are trying to use your own system id to create a custom UV identifier in Adobe...

This variable designates an eVar to contain your unique visitor identifier. This variable lets you report on customer activity using your own unique identifier.

---

This is a pretty advanced technique... 

I am guessing your "Visitor ID" that you show in your screenshot is actually you tracking the ECID?

If so, how are you getting this value? The most reliable way is to use "D=mid". This is a "dynamic variable notation" that basically says, take the value passed in "mid" of the tracking call, and put the same value in the dimension (prop or eVar).

If you are using the JS call, or trying to extract from the cookie, I wonder if it's possible that something there is failing and causing ripples of impact.....

[DhanA2]

@Jennifer_Dungan  got some clue why direct numbers inflated, due to social media  apps taffic they're coming up without referrers in it.

Do we have any solution to this other than user agent - coz it is hard to filter down some of the social media apps.

One more thins still getting two visitor count for ecid after apply this solution  "D=mid".  any other way for this @Jennifer_Dungan 
CC: @Josh__Stephens  

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Wow... deja vu...

I literally just shared this on another post, but I think it will help you too:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/events/the-skill-exchange-recordings/analytics/sept2021/anal...

Start around timestamp 23:00

[Jennifer_Dungan]

You could be getting different ECIDs if the social media apps are opening in the device "default" browser in the webview, but they use a different browser for coming to your site directly, or when content is opened outside the app.

Some Social Media apps may hide the referrer, hence the "direct traffic"... the only way I know to identify it is through the modified User Agent String (IF provided)