[Mike]

Hi all,

Just been running through my google analytics, and tbh i have no clue whats good, whats not. My rule so far has been, "the graphs point up so cant be bad!"

Now when it comes to the sources of traffic for one site i have

8.75% Direct Traffic
3.26% Referring Sites
87.99% Search Engines

and another i have

44.11% Direct Traffic
30.17% Referring Sites
25.72% Search Engines


No which one of these is better?


the first one has double the traffic of the second, so that might be an answer though it could also be that one site is better....

So what do the chiefs on here think then?

[OldWelshGuy]

Not as easy as that Mike (nothing ever is). It depends on the type of site Communities for example have FAR higher direct traffic, as people bookmark them. Also a community with content will have more back-links generated automatically, hence more referral traffic.

Personally I would rather have the second set than the first set, as your business is less reliant on the vagaries of the mighty Google

[Mike]

I figured it may have been wishful thinking, but hey - I dont know if half of the stats are good - they should provide people to go through them with you lol

[OldWelshGuy]

Mike, it isn't that bad, as I said, it all depends on the market place. Directories for example will get practically all theiur traffic from search as the repeat business tends to be less.

Shopping carts also tend to have higher traffic from search (if optimised properly)

[desybabe]

understanding analytics and using them intelligently takes a lot of experience.
yes for sure you can gain knowledge to use to your advantage form a quick look on GA.

I spend a lot of time looking at analytics as I look after many sites, a wide range of sectors and sizes. It is important to know the site, sector, target audience, etc.

different strategies bring totally different results.

e.g. if you are doing e-commerce of a popular product range then you may see more referring traffic as you have price compare, affiliates and ppc as main drivers.
if you have a b2b service you may have less referrers in number but better in qulaity of conversion from the likes of Applegate etc.
if you have a quirky product or something bought by teens to early 30s e.g. t shirts, then you may get lots of traffic from social sites and specificads. You would find it difficult to rank on first page for 't-shirts'.

Before looking at analytics and saying is this set good or bad, you need to know much more about the url in question.

be happy to offer ten mins of my time (FREE) if you offer up the sectors in question, this may help you with your other projects.

[nass]

Sounds like the second is more established and authoritative (referring sites, bookmarked etc). In terms of which is better, that depends only on your goals and conversions. If you find the second one getting far fewer visitors but more conversions, that's your more successful one

[Arleigh]

It's really hard to choose which one is better because it really depends on the goal or target of your site.

[astoller]

direct traffic can be robots and other web crawlers taht are of little vlaue to your business.
Referrals are the best for of business.Someone saw you elsewhere and clicked through to find out more.
That's what you want