Direct Traffic Share

Imperfect, easy to misread, and still one of the more honest signals available about whether anyone comes back.

Measures

Share of human sessions with no referrer, trended rather than read as an absolute.

Data Source

Server logs with bot traffic classified out, or an analytics package where one is installed.

Indicates

Deliberate return: bookmarks, typed URLs, links from private messages and apps.

What Moves It

Being worth returning to. Also, unhelpfully, any change in how referrers are reported.

Does Not Prove

Loyalty. The direct bucket is a catch-all that collects everything with a missing referrer, including a fair amount that was not direct at all.

Status

Measured with caveats. Treat the trend as the signal and the absolute number as an estimate.