This week at work, one of our clients was asking what the “other” traffic source in Google Analytics (GA). 
There’s not too much detail in the actual interface for Google Analytics so you have to do some digging. Traffic sources are also known as the medium in GA. I did some digging and found that Google Analytics captures the medium automatically for some other mediums, the most prominent being email.
To find the list of the other mediums, you need to click on Traffic Sources > All Traffic Sources. This will provide you with a list of all your sources of traffic as well as the mediums. 
There is a dropdown where you can filter to the actual medium, too, to show all the other traffic sources.
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This can be a very useful tool. If you’re utilizing email marketing to drive traffic back to your website, you can measure how well you’re doing by adding a querystring that specifies the medium:
https://martech.zone?utm_medium=email
There are quite a few parameters available if you wish to measure your campaigns.
Just spotted this a few days ago and couldn’t figure it out. Now I know how…thanks!
I saw this but never gave it much thought. That’s a good tip though. I plan on having a email camping so this code will come in handy.
Thanks for the great tip! I’ll be playing with this dropdown menu more often now…
Glad my article could help!
-Alex
Infact there is a lot to understand for us in this Traffic Sources. We can use segments to differentiate Organic and inorganic traffic coming from search engines which comes handy at time. Infact a lot more from GA !
Thanks for the great tip! I?ll be playing with this dropdown menu more often now?
Hey Doug – thanks for the post. I have been noticing this “Other” increasing over the week and now understand what has been happening.
-Steven
So glad we were able to assist, Steven!
but is there a way to follow the link in google analytics to the traffic source. I had a huge increase of visits from a traffic source but I don’t recognize it and I can’t find it on the web?
Yes, you actually can but it’s a bit of a pain. You have to click on each referral source domain independently and then you’ll see the full path of the referral. Attached is a screenshot (with the new layout of GA).
I’ve been getting 50% direct traffic these days… of total of around 200-300 hits daily. 02% of direct hits are new, and bounce rate is around 60% – 70%… Is it normal? What could the cause be? And what is your bounce rate?
I think 50% direct traffic is a fantastic stat along with the bounce rate you describe. As your site grows in popularity – especially with search and social – you’ll find much higher stats on referral and search traffic, and higher bounce rates to go with them!
I honestly don’t measure up one site to another… I battle older trends with newer trends to ensure we’re moving in the right direction. Thanks for sharing Namanyay!
Thanks for the quick reply 😀