Is there a known issue with a traffic drop in typed/bookmarked?

[johno35343273]

I have a substantial drop in visitors with no referrer that started on May 23 and then was compounded on June 4.  There is no geo correlation, or much that I can find under visitor profile. It *seems* like it hit certain browsers more than others (Mozilla, abd then Microsoft later) but overall it's pretty widespread.  

The one thing that I have been able to verify is that the issue is much more present on certain pages than others (Our product pages) which made me think it was either a tagging issue or a bot.  However, at this point nothing verifies to support either hypothesis. The only thing is all the traffic is direct and not effecting mobile.

(I have also asked about paid campaigns, etc to no avail)

Please let me know if you have any thoughts at all.

Thanks,

-john

[Alexis_Cazes_]

Did you check referrer type report ? Is there an increase in any other referrer type ? Did you check that no new Processing rules or Vista rules have been put in place ?

[jeff_beland]

Hi John,

I am having a similar problem. About a 15% decrease from direct traffic concentrated in IE and Firefox. My issue looks like it started around April 13. Have you contacted client care?

[johno35343273]

Hi Alexis - Thanks for your reply, this whole thing is really odd.  No processing rules have been set up on this account.  On the ref type report, there is a drop in 'Typed / Bookmarked' because there is no referrer on the traffic that is dropping.  (No others are affected)  I have also noticed that most of this has occurred largely in Internet Explorer 8.  

Any known issues with that?

[Alexis_Cazes_ · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

Please Check the Internal URL filters settings in the admin console. Make sure that only your internal domains are filtered. Some people list a . or something like that I filter our all referrers.

What is odd is that typed/bookmarked is when there is no referrer passed, so maybe some kind or redirect that set a referrer that is filter out of the referrer report.

Anyway is the solution listed above does not help please contact ClientCare. They can check the raw data for you.

Best regards.

Alexis Cazes

[emmajoan]

We saw an increase at the exact same time!! We been thinking it was/is:

• some https -> http or http -> https (we've almost complete moving most of our site over to SSL) confusion
• Facebook apps traffic (since then FB has seem to improved sending their referrer info)
• Other apps traffic --> phone browsers

Our other system, Chartbeat, saw a similar increase at the same time. (They call their unknown referrer 'email/apps/IM'). I'm interested to hear that you saw a change at the same time too!!

Good summary of dark here: https://www.dynamicyield.com/2015/06/dark-social/

Anyway, our theories change almost every month whenever we have time to dive in to it deeper. Lots of execs over here have been tempted to blame it on Adobe, and I've heard from friends who use Google Analytics that their dark traffic is almost zilch, but there's no way to know if that's because a) their traffic patterns are different b) they have more monetized (and therefore track-able) campaigns or c) if it's really a tool problem.

Would love to hear from others if your T/B went up at the same time, and what your theories are. 

FWIW, we're a major news organization, with basically no paid traffic, and a ton of social love. 

[clee510]

We are also seeing similar problems starting in December 2015, where we saw a 20% - 30% decrease in typed / bookmark traffic. We checked tagging and other referrer types - but have not seen increases or any other anomalies. The only thing we changed at the same time we saw a drop in typed / bookmark traffic from the referrer type report was activate marketing channel reports. But I don't see how this would affect the the referrer type report. 

[Alexis_Cazes_]

Hi,

I would suggest all of you to create a ticket with Adobe ClientCare. 

As each of you have different implementation, we will have to review your configuration and implementation and raw data and we should be able to provide you a root cause of your issue at the end.

Best regards.

Alexis Cazes.

Lead Technical Support Engineer