Direct Visits to a website

In the many years that I have been running a website I have been interested in how Internet users access my sites. Using tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console give a good indication of how these accesses are made. However, direct accesses are not so easy to determine.

The sure-fire way to monitor site access is to view the server logs of the website. These accesses cannot be blocked by those that turn off cookies, JavaScript and other tracking methods.

Why I am suspicious of Direct Visits

When I see a direct visit in my logs and reports I often wonder why the visit has been made.

In any cases the page that is accessed is one that I know has been found before by someone making a search or has been told that I have a page on a particular subject.

Some pages have been redirected at the server-level and they still exist locally. These pages may well have their redirection removed should the circumstances change.