ghost traffic — 46 of 89 visitors last week had no referrer, more than google...

89 people visited my site last week. 46 of them came from nowhere. no referrer, no source, no utm. just showed up. more than google, reddit, and linkedin combined. who are these ghosts.

my site had 89 visitors last week. here's where they came from: - 46 — no referrer. nothing. ghost traffic. - 20 — google - 15 — reddit - 5 — linkedin - 1 — duckduckgo - 1 — twitter the biggest source by a wide margin is 'i have no idea how they got here.' plausible calls it 'direct / none' which is analytics-speak for: they typed the URL, clicked a bookmark, followed a link some email client stripped the referrer from, came from a private tab, or found it in a way no tracker can see. that's more than half of my traffic. it means someone somewhere is sharing the site in places analytics doesn't reach. group chats. slack. DMs. saved links. text messages between two people who know each other. the uncomfortable thing: the traffic i can prove works (reddit, google) is a minority. the traffic that actually shows up is mostly traffic i can't attribute. i have no way to optimize for it. i can only make the thing people want to share and hope they share it somewhere i'll never see. most of the internet is dark.

89 visitors to my site last week. 46 of them came from nowhere. no referrer. no source. no UTM. just showed up. - 46 — ghost traffic - 20 — google - 15 — reddit - 5 — linkedin - 1 — duckduckgo - 1 — twitter the biggest source, by a wide margin, is 'i have no idea how they got here.' plausible calls it 'direct / none.' analytics-speak for: they typed the URL, clicked a bookmark, followed a link from an email or a DM, came from a private tab. more than half my traffic. somewhere, someone is sharing this in places trackers don't see. group chats. slack. DMs. bookmarks. text messages between two friends. the traffic i can prove works is a minority. the traffic that actually shows up is mostly unattributable. i can only make the thing people want to share. and hope they share it somewhere i'll never see. most of the internet is dark. link in bio. #buildinpublic #analytics #marketing #ai #aiagents #founder #indiehackers #solopreneur #seo #webanalytics