Strange Google Analytics output (Direct visitors)

Hi there,

I'm running a site which I'm trying to rank.
Suddenly out of the blue I'm getting a serious spike in traffic after I've put my URL on a forum 24 hours ago.
However, I don't suspect the spike is all explained because of the above.

See my Google Analytics output.
I've got 71 Direct hits in the last 30 minutes... this never happened before, nor can I explain it.



Can this somehow still be referral traffic which shows up as direct traffic?
Normally I receive 30 to 60 maximum direct hits per day.

The problem is that I don't believe it is actual direct traffic, but I can't explain where the traffic is coming from.
Can somebody give me advice on how to proceed or what I'm looking at?

Its normal, might be bots or crawlers, although google has started showing some organic traffic as direct.

This is normal.

Did you get these new links on sites using the HTTPS protocol? If so, the referrer gets stripped out upon somebody clicking your link hence showing up as direct hits.

This is often the case.

Next time, try using UTM tags if possible to force the traffic into the referral traffic source in GA.

The bots frequently crawl the links from forums, and there could be some organic visitors too. This happens with backlinks from active websites/forums and there is nothing to bother.

Sweely said:

This is normal.

Did you get these new links on sites using the HTTPS protocol? If so, the referrer gets stripped out upon somebody clicking your link hence showing up as direct hits.

This is often the case.

Next time, try using UTM tags if possible to force the traffic into the referral traffic source in GA.

Click to expand...

Everything is on HTTPS. You are probably right. I'm going to dive in these UTM tags.
Thanks All