Does Matomo attribute more traffic to the direct channel?

maria · September 13, 2022, 1:49pm

Hello,

We are experiencing high direct traffic which does not correspond to real traffic, at the same time organic traffic is lower (although keyword positions are higher). It seems that the direct traffic is being attributed to visits from other channels.

Is this possible, what could it be due to?

Thank you very much!

María

heurteph-ei · September 13, 2022, 2:52pm

Hi @maria
Maybe this long discussion can help you:

github.com/matomo-org/matomo

Understand why conversions are sometimes attributed to "Direct entry" or the payment provider, instead of the current channel

opened 03:58AM - 13 Jan 22 UTC

closed 11:48AM - 22 Aug 22 UTC

tsteur

Bug c: Tracking

from https://forum.matomo.org/t/referral-exclusions/33582/25 The resolution s…uggested by Matomo in this article https://matomo.org/faq/how-to/how-do-i-add-a-referral-exclusion-in-matomo/ does not really address the underlying issue - it merely recategorizes the referrer from “website” to “direct entry”, which in reality isn’t the true referrer for the user’s visit. Here is an example of what is happening. 1. User clicks on an email link to visit the website. 2. User browses website and adds items to basket (at this stage referrer is “Email campaign”) 3. User completes the order but and website redirects to 3rd party payment provider (paypal/amazon etc) 4. User returns to website (but now the referrer for the visit is reset from “Email campaign” to “website” or if you have set the referrer exclusions it will be set to “direct entry”. What we need is for it to remain as “Email Campaign”. As a result we are over attributing the channel “direct entry” greatly (40% vs 15% on GA). I'm not sure if we actually should call this feature "Referrer exclusion" as it's more like an "ignore refrerrer" or "keep the original referrer"? We wouldn't exclude this tracking request. We would still track that referrer but re-use the original referrer from the same visit. If it's from a different visit then we would use again a direct visit?

matthieu · September 14, 2022, 1:35am

Hi Maria,

Matomo should not attribute more traffic to Direct channel than other analytics tools, it should be the same. Are you seeing some differences and could you maybe share examples of numbers you’re seeing in Matomo VS another tool? Thank you,