Over 30% of traffic labeled is “direct”, organic search attributed to direct

Developer Support APIs & Integrations
1

I know there are a few threads dealing with this problem of too much of direct traffic, but I will still create a new one to make it as detailed as possible.

Hubspot account id is 58469851. I collect emails using checkout form (located here , must must not be empty for it to appear). When user provides his email and proceeds to checkout, I submit it to Hubspot via forms API (form id 3d7322d1-eceb-48eb-9a55-0c9a75884bed). Using form solved the previous problem of “offline sources”, but now over 30% of users are being attributed as “Direct traffic”.

I actually saw it by doing a test. I erased all browser data, went to Google and search for “faux wood beams”. Then I clicked on a link of our site (fauxwoodbeams.com), on the site I went to product page, added it to cart, provided fake email address u23@example4289.ru and clicked “Proceed to checkout”. The contact u23@example4289.ru was created via the form, and it was attributed to “direct traffic”, even though it clearly was an organic search. I did a few tests like this, and every time the new contact was “direct traffic”.

I precisely tried all solutions listed on this page, but none of them seem applicable.

The referring URL of a visit is an identified mail domain or RSS reader

Not the case.

The referring URL of a visit is empty because a visitor typed your website URL into their browser directly or the referring information is otherwise lost

Not the case, in my tests I was coming from Google

The referring domain has SSL (https://), but your domain does not

All our pages are loaded via SSL

A contact submitted a HubSpot form on a page without the HubSpot tracking code

Tracking code is installed on all pages of the sites

There is no user token being passed through the form submission

I am using forms API to submit an email, and provide all Hubspot context (hutk, ipAddress, pageUrl, pageName) with it.

The visitor who submitted the form has opted to not accept cookies from your site or ignored the banner completely

Right now we don’t have that banner and set cookies by default

Cookies are not being used on your site

Cookies are definitely enabled on our site

Filtered IP addresses were removed or changed

As I said in the example above, I acted as a new user (by erasing all cookies) and simulated an organic search, and it was still attributed to direct traffic. The IP I was doing it from is not filtered out. I actually checked many users from “Direct traffic”, they are legit real people from various IP addresses, and those are not filtered out.

Changes in cross-domain linking could cause an increase in direct traffic

All domains we use are added to Settings → Reports → Tracking code > Advanced Tracking > Additional site domains

Source tracking in HubSpot emails may be disabled.

Source tracking is enabled in Settings → Marketing → Email → Tracking (Add source tracking tags to all URLs). And, as mentioned above, I didn’t use email link to get on the site

Emails were sent from a non-HubSpot email service that does not include tracking on links clicked in the email

Obviously not applicable, see step above.

Any suggestions why over 30% of traffic is listed as organic, would be welcomed.

2

Hi, @ym42324.

Thanks again for the detailed post.

I took a look at the example contact in account 5664924 and see that the “First page seen” value is https://www.fauxwoodbeams.com/corbels.php while the “First referring site” value is https://www.fauxwoodbeams.com/. This contact was bucketed as “Direct Traffic” because it has your home page as its “First referring site” rather than a Google search page.

When I’ve seen this behavior before, it’s been caused by the HubSpot tracking code either not being present on the “First referring site” page or not firing before the visitor navigated to additional pages. When this behavior occurs with home pages, the latter scenario is more likely due to the amount of content that often loads before HubSpot’s tracking script.

Would you mind testing again but wait until you see the tracking code fire on your home page (per this article, check the Network tab for 5664924.js) before navigating to shop pages like /corbels.php and submitting the form?

If you are unable to consistently reproduce the behavior with these tests, then the most likely cause is visitors navigating away from your home page to other site pages before the tracking code has a chance to fire on the home page and record their referrer.

3

Thank you, @IsaacTakushi

I got the idea, the issue is addressed to the fact that Hubspot tracking code is not loaded fast enough. But I am clueless how to solve it. The code is present on literally every page of the site AND it is the very first thing to load (I placed it at the very top of the page, there are no tracking codes loading before i, and I made sure loading is not deferred and is not

asynchronous. I guess if customer is very quick to leave the landing page, there is no way to track his source?

4

Will post the final update in case someone is having a similar problem and is looking for solution.

Our marketing team had Hubspot developers look at this problem and their final response was the following:

"The primary issue is that the Faux Wood Beams site has many scripts running when the webpage is loaded, causing the overall load-time for the page to be too slow and inconsistent for the Hubspot Tracking Code to be reliable in all situations. Our best option would be to analyze the scripts that are currently loading on this site and identify which are necessary, and remove those that are not. By doing so, this will reduce the overall load-time for the page and allow the Hubspot Tracking Code to load in time. "

So the root cause of too much direct traffic problem is that Hubspot script is not loading and executing fast enough, so if customer was too quick to navigate away from the landing page, it is really no way to track his source, and he will go to “Direct traffic”.

Most of 3rd party scripts in our website load via Google Tag Manager, and they are all necessary. I am going to give it a last try and see what happens if I move Hubspot script to GTM as well and see if it performs better. Will provide an update on that in this thread.
Update: moving to GTM didn’t really help, however, when I have a very light, static HTML page with nothing besides Hubspot code, it always detects traffic source. So the only way to solve it is make your site super fast to load. The bad news: most modern websites have so much scripts running at the background on every load, that it’s essentially impossible to achieve. In that case you are out of luck.

5

The bad news: most modern websites have so much scripts running at the background on every load, that it’s essentially impossible to achieve. In that case you are out of luck. --> Focusing on this part of the response and I am wondering; since the rule is that most of the sites behave like this, shouldn’t it be the other way around? Meaning Hubspot to adapt?

6

Hi @DMountanea and great point, modern tracking challenges are common, and your suggestion is valid.
HubSpot is always evaluating ways to improve our attribution and adapt to evolving web technology.
I recommend sharing this via the HubSpot Developer Feedback Form, where our product team reviews user-driven feedback for future updates.
Thanks for raising this insight!
Bérangère

7

Hey there, do you have an update on this? I’m struggling with the same issue and am currently working with our web team to improve loading times.

8

We are also running into the same thing

9

I posted it below in 2020. Unless your page and all of its JS is loaded in a millisecond, you are going to experience this problem. If customer navigates away from the landing page before Hubspot script is finished executing, he is being counted as “direct traffic”. No other way to solve other than speed up your site.

10

Interesting, I just saw your new info. We have quite a bit of script running as well (we use LiveChat and have other Facebook and GA codes too). It definitely doesn’t happen all the time, but definitely in some weird circumstances for deep inner pages. Will look forward to seeing if your fix works at all

11

Any update here on this guys?

12

I am also looking for an update, we are experiencing the same thing