Sudden drop in Direct traffic on January 1st, 2025 – misattribution or technical issue?

Support & Bugs
1

Hello,

Since January 1st, 2025, we’ve observed a sharp and sudden drop in the number of visits attributed to the “Direct” source in our Matomo instance.

Before that date, we had stable levels of Direct traffic (over 20,000 visits/day), and on January 1st, the volume dropped by more than half and has remained low since. This change has significantly impacted our overall traffic figures.
Here’s a screenshot of the trend:

direct entries - sources canal matomo
direct entries - sources canal matomo1010×170 21.9 KB

We have not made any major changes to our site’s tracking code or campaign tagging on that date. This leads us to believe either:

  • A Matomo update or change in attribution logic may have occurred,
  • Or there’s a technical misconfiguration we haven’t identified.

Has anyone experienced something similar around that period?
Are there known issues or configuration changes we should investigate?

Thank you in advance for your help!

2

Hello Damien,
I didn’t notice any drop in other Matomo’s instance.
Did you notice any other increase in traffic somewhere else?

3

sudden drop we’ve observed in our traffic reports starting January 1st, 2025, specifically related to Direct traffic.
According to our data in Matomo, the number of visits attributed to the “Direct” source dropped significantly on that day and has remained at a much lower level ever since. This shift has had a visible impact on our overall traffic volume, with no compensation in other sources such as Organic, Referral, or Paid.