Direct navigation (type-in traffic)

Direct navigation means going straight to a web address. Someone types "hotels.com" or "cheapflights.example" into the address bar and presses enter. Visits of this kind are called type-in traffic.

This behaviour created the domain parking industry. In the early web, many people guessed addresses by typing a product word and adding ".com". Owners of generic names such as those for loans, flights or flowers received a steady stream of visitors without building anything, and could earn from each visit by showing ads on a parked domain.

Type-in traffic was valued because it resembled search. A person who typed a product word arguably had commercial intent. That was the argument for placing parked domains in the search partner network.

The behaviour has faded. Modern browsers merge the address bar and the search box, so a typed word usually triggers a search, and mobile users open apps. What remains is more accidental: mistyped names (typosquatting), outdated links and addresses of sites that have closed (expired domain). A visitor who arrives by mistake is not a shopper, which is much of why advertisers lost faith in parked-domain clicks.

An example

In the early 2000s a person wanting flowers might simply type "flowers.com" into the address bar. Today the same person types "flowers" and the browser runs a search instead.