Definition
Direct traffic is the visits that arrived with no referrer. It mixes bookmarks, typed URLs, and hidden sources.
Direct traffic is the name dashboards give visits that have no referrer. It is a leftover bucket. Typed URLs and bookmarks are in it. So are clicks from mail apps, chat apps, and links sent with the referrer turned off. Growth in the bucket often means more sources are hidden, not that more people memorized the domain.
It is not a channel you can optimize as one action. Tag the links you care about if you need them pulled out of the leftover. That tagging is UTM tracking. MapMyVisitors does not label a row "direct." You see referrers, and you see visits with none. Those empty ones are this bucket. The longer reading is what is direct traffic.
