My traffic sources always show as 70-80% direct, but I KNOW that this is not true. My other stats programs aren't this bad. Is there any way to get a more accurate reading of traffic sources in GA? anyone know why this is? I imagine that it's just not picking up the referrer properly, but when I check the logs it looks like more than 20% have a proper referrer...
"direct" also refers to bookmarks so it's possible people are bookmarking you and returning via that route. If nothing else, sign up with another stats reporting site and compare over a few weeks to find out of Analytics is really messing up that bad
Ensure you have the profile setup with the correct domain and that all pages are tagged up. I had a similiar problem in that adwords was reporting more clicks than analytics was. Analytics was picking up some PPC traffic as direct visitors.
My suggestion is to check the source of traffic from google analytics. I also recieve lot of direct traffic and it is from seo forums or social bookmarking sites likely.
I think you should also check the quality of your traffic from Awstats and compare your daily page views and unique visitors with GA.