What is Traffic Source
Definition: Traffic source in the simplest form can be defined as the origin through which people found your site. Every session or visit to your website has origin or source of the hit. Whenever someone visits your website through desktop, mobile or any Internet-enabled device, the Web & Google Analytics track its source or origin, which is classified as traffic source.
Description: Understanding traffic sources helps derive the understanding of the sources which are driving the most and least traffic to your website. This helps businesses to shape up their SEO, SEM and SMO strategies. For example, a television commercial should show increase in your direct traffic or referral traffic depending on the type of the Web address used. Traffic sources can be easily categorized as direct traffic. Direct traffic is often defined as the user accessing your domain or website directly. Any instance of direct access to your website without any referral parameteris mapped as direct tTraffic. For instance, the user typed your website address in the browser to directly access your website. Direct traffic broadly includes any hyperlink which without any referrer gets the user to your website.
Referral Traffic: Referral traffic are sessions or visits collected from external sources. Traffic source is termed as ˇ°referrerˇ± because it refers traffic from one website to another. Referral traffic is user accessing your webpage through known sources. This can be categorized as ¨C banner ads, email campaigns etc. See more (Link to Referral Traffic Definition)
Search Engines: Search engine traffic is that traffic that comes from people clicking on links on a search results page for any search engine, like Google, Bing, Yahoo or more.
Other: These numbers include any source not classified as the above. This may be any campaign you have run on any other platform to acquire traffic.
Description: Understanding traffic sources helps derive the understanding of the sources which are driving the most and least traffic to your website. This helps businesses to shape up their SEO, SEM and SMO strategies. For example, a television commercial should show increase in your direct traffic or referral traffic depending on the type of the Web address used. Traffic sources can be easily categorized as direct traffic. Direct traffic is often defined as the user accessing your domain or website directly. Any instance of direct access to your website without any referral parameteris mapped as direct tTraffic. For instance, the user typed your website address in the browser to directly access your website. Direct traffic broadly includes any hyperlink which without any referrer gets the user to your website.
Referral Traffic: Referral traffic are sessions or visits collected from external sources. Traffic source is termed as ˇ°referrerˇ± because it refers traffic from one website to another. Referral traffic is user accessing your webpage through known sources. This can be categorized as ¨C banner ads, email campaigns etc. See more (Link to Referral Traffic Definition)
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Search Engines: Search engine traffic is that traffic that comes from people clicking on links on a search results page for any search engine, like Google, Bing, Yahoo or more.
Other: These numbers include any source not classified as the above. This may be any campaign you have run on any other platform to acquire traffic.