Dark Social, Google News, AdBlock: Your links of the week

Note: This post originally appeared on the blog of my since-shuttered analytics firm: Axiomatic. That said, if you need some analytics work, get in touch

A lot of that Direct traffic you're seeing in Google Analytics and the like? It might be as direct as you think it is ...

• Dark social traffic in the mobile app era: Speaking of "dark social", analysis seems to show that the majority of it is coming from mobile apps - Facebook most notably.

• Best Practices to Avoid Dark Social: I'm going to be doing some more exploring around this shortly, but LunaMetrics' general workaround - make sure you UTM tag  everything is going to be sound regardless. (Here's a past newsletter on UTMs if you need a primer.)

• How much of your news site’s search traffic comes from Google News? Probably 5 to 25 percent: We tend to think of Google Search as a monolithic entity, but it's not. If you run a news site, Google News can be a major segment of your referrals. Image site? Be on the lookout for Google Images referrals.

• The Rise of AdBlock Reveals A Serious Problem in the Advertising Ecosystem: For years, advertisers have embraced more and more intrusive ad formats to try to combat banner blindness. And I've helped launch some of them. Now, it appears that push toward obnoxiousness is finally catching up to them.

  And not a minute too soon.