Why your analytics says "direct", and how to see what really works

You posted on LinkedIn, sent a newsletter and asked a partner to share your offer. A week later you open your analytics to see which one worked, and the biggest source is a word that tells you nothing: direct.

Direct does not mean people typed your address. It means your analytics does not know where they came from. The good news is that most of that is fixable, with one habit that takes a minute per link.

What direct really means

Every visit carries two clues to where it came from: the website that sent it (the referrer), and any labels on the link. Google's analytics reads them like this:

Google files a visit with no clues as (direct) / (none), and its own definition includes visits "through links from offline documents such as PDFs and Word documents".

So direct is the pile for unknown. Some of it is people who typed your address or used a bookmark. Much of it is people who clicked a link somewhere that did not say where they were:

• a link in WhatsApp, Slack or Teams
• a link in an email program, including your own newsletter if it is sent from a tool that does not label its links
• a link in a PDF, a Word document or a slide deck
• a printed QR code
• a short link or a redirect that dropped the end of the address

The fix: label the links you share

Labels are a few words added to the end of a link. They are often called UTMs, after the utm_ at the start of each one:

https://your-site.com/signup?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autumn-launch

Google says always to use the first three. For one campaign, your links might look like this:

Four rules keep the numbers clean:

1. Use the same campaign name everywhere you promote the same thing.
2. Write every label in lowercase. Google counts utm_source=google and utm_source=Google as two different sources.
3. Use the mediums analytics knows. Google sorts visits into groups from the medium: email goes to Email, social to Organic Social, referral to Referral. A medium it does not know, such as print, goes to a group called Unassigned. The source and campaign are still kept, but the visit will not sit with the others in its group.
4. Never label links between your own pages. A new label replaces the one the visitor arrived with. GOV.UK's analysts forbid it on their own site because it "will break the default referrer and attribution tracking".

Labelling the first visit also pays later. When the same person comes back by typing your address, Google's visit reports credit the visit to the labels they first arrived with, not to direct.

Labels show the arrival. Record what happens next

A label tells you where a visit started. It does not tell you whether the person did anything useful. For that, the thing you care about has to be recorded too: a form filled in, a call booked, a purchase.

The simplest way to join the two is to send the link straight to the page with the form, such as your signup or enquiry page, and have the form keep the labels with the person who fills it in. Then a sale three weeks later can still be traced back to the post that introduced them.

Test one journey before you share

1. Click your own labelled link.
2. Fill in the form with your own email address.
3. Check that your analytics shows the source and campaign you wrote, and that the labels are kept with your test enquiry.

If the labels are missing, a link shortener or a redirect may have dropped them. In Google Analytics, labelled visits are listed under Acquisition, Traffic acquisition.

The report you are working towards is a plain one: LinkedIn brought 100 visitors, 10 signups and 2 customers. Direct can never tell you that. Labels can.

How Bernard does this for you

Bernard is an AI-assisted website and marketing platform for small businesses. He builds a new site or moves an existing one, keeps it fast and readable to search and AI tools, and looks after it. Once measuring is on, he reads your numbers each week and suggests what to do next, with a button that does it. On the Medium and Large plans he also plans your marketing every six weeks and drafts your posts, emails and pages. Everything lands on a draft you approve. One flat price per site.

On labels in particular:

• The links he sends are labelled. Links to your own site in your emails and in the social posts he schedules carry labels, and any labels you wrote yourself are kept.
• Your forms keep the labels. When someone fills in a form on the page a labelled link opened, the contact record shows the source, medium and campaign that brought them.
• He writes the rest. Tell him what you are promoting and where you will share it, and he writes one link for each place, with the same names, pointed at the page with your form. See how to label your links.

See what Bernard would do with your business. Already have a website? Paste its address and he measures it up, free, and shows you the new place before you decide anything. Starting from nothing? Tell him what you are building.