What is (direct) / (none) traffic in Google Analytics

This is a vexing subject for clients because the majority of traffic is relegated to this nebulous label, and there are no good explanations from Google. (well there may be a good reason for that)

Lets start with what is this (direct) / (none) telling me? (Direct) represents the source of the traffic. (None) is the medium by which the traffic arrived, such as “organic search”.

Lets remember where Google is coming from when it tells you traffic is (direct) / (none). First, people working at Google think they are the smartest people on the planet. I won’t take issue with that. But as a result of this belief, their vocabulary lacks certain diversity, such as the words “I don’t know”. But secondly (and very smart of them to avoid) is the fact that bot traffic may be logged as (direct).

A web browser uses a variable called the HTTP_REFERER that tells the next destination where this click came from. When someone clicks a link to your site, the source is read by Google contained in the HTTP_REFERER variable. Its that simple. Are there sources that do not include the  HTTP_REFERER variable. Yes, such as when someone types the URL directly into the browser. Does this mean that all no-referrers entered the URL directly into the browser address bar? No.

(direct) / (none) can mean:

• your URL was typed directly into the browser
• bots crawling your site
• the visitor has bookmarked your site
• the visitor clicked a link inside a document (PDF, word)
• the visitor clicked a link in your email/newsletter/app
• the visitor clicked on a shortened URL

Conventional wisdom says that the most common sources of No-Referrer are emails and documents. If you send out a lot of email, newsletters or documents with links in them, these could result in a lot of (direct) / (none) traffic. Overlooked is the fact that most bots crawling your site will register as DIRECT traffic.  This is what one of my bots looks like in apache/squid logs:

1370272638.162   2446 {555.555.555.555} TCP_MISS/200 42176 GET http://www.example.com/ – DIRECT/255.255.255.255 text/html

Source : http://www.hartenstine.com/661/what-is-direct-none-traffic-in-google-analytics