: Google Analytics direct traffic dropped by 50% after switching to https everyone, have a little dilemma and was hoping to get some advice here. I recently installed a new SSL (3 months ago)

@Samaraweera270

Where external https sites were linking to http site pages before the change over, users arriving via those links would be seen as direct traffic in GA. With the site now all changed to https, less referral data will be incorrectly reported as direct/none.

Also given that the site pages were available via both protocols prior https changeover, it's very likely the original medium/source for some visits was being lost to direct/none mid session, due to moving from a https page to a http page.
The change in source during a session will force the current session to end and a new session to begin.

So users and pageviews shouldn't vary too much however there should also be a similar marked decrease in the number of sessions.

Usually, because the website domain is on the Referral Exclusion List, the initial source/medium wont be lost. However, because Https does not pass referrer info to http by default to begin with, in this situation it does get overwritten by direct/none.

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