Traffic Sources

Traffic Sources

The Traffic Sources report of the expo-MAX Real Analytics suite is one of the most robust and detailed reports. With five different breakdowns and even more detailed reporting within each section, the Traffic Sources report is designed to give you a clear picture of how visitors find your website from a broad perspective as well as on a granular level. Within the Traffic Sources report are the (1) overview, (2) direct traffic (3) referring sites (4) search engines and (5) search terms.

1. Overview

The Traffic Sources Overview report pulls together representative data from each of the other Traffic Sources sections. The Overview serves as a launch pad for more detailed analysis by giving you a bird’s eye view of the most salient details from the direct traffic, referring sites, search engines and search terms reports. From the Overview, you can click on an item to be see more information in the pertinent section.

2. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic consists of visits where users did not click on a hyperlink or find your website through a search engine or other referring source. Direct traffic usually stems from bookmarks, outdoor signage and physical mailers, advertisements and other materials. The Direct Traffic report shows you trends, an intensity map and a detailed breakdown by location. This helps you gauge the effectiveness of your region specific signage or direct mailing campaigns.

3. Referring Sites

The Referring Sites report gives you a trending graph, site statistics and a detailed ranking of all the sites that sent traffic to your website. This includes search engines as well as blogs, websites and other online hubs that linked to your pages. From the Referring Sites report, you can zero in on details specific to a single referrer and track user activity once they arrive on your site. The Referring Sites report helps you measure the effectiveness of your external Internet marketing and search engine optimization campaigns as well as identify sources of traffic spikes.

4. Search Engines

The Search Engines report is crucial for analyzing search engine optimization and search engine marketing campaigns. This includes traffic from organic listings, pay-per-click advertisements and specialty search engines, such as image searches, local searches and business directories. Also, expo-MAX Real Analytics tells you the specific hostname for the search engine (google.co.uk or yahoo.in, for example) and your search engine ranking for each search term. The Search Engines report is also linked to the Search Terms report—clicking on a search engine gives you a breakdown of search terms, where clicking a search term brings you to the Search Terms report.

5. Search Terms

Another important piece of the puzzle for SEO and SEM campaigns, the Search Terms report pulls together data from incoming traffic and shows you how visitors are searching and which search engines they are using. You can see how your pages rank on the search engines. You can also filter through all the search terms to identify groupings and trends.

Altogether, the Traffic Sources report serves as a comprehensive source of visitor information that gives you insight into how your website is displayed on all search engines and how users typically find your website. The Traffic Sources report is also linked to other reports, which helps you see the data in context for deeper analysis.