Direct means somebody typed your address or used a bookmark. That is a good sign: it usually means word of mouth, a business card, or a van. Search engines is Google and friends, and it is the line that grows slowly and steadily as your site settles in.
AI assistants is newer and worth watching. It means somebody was talking to ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity, was given your site as a link, and clicked it. For some trades this is already a real trickle of work.
Be careful about what this can and cannot tell you. It shows people who CLICKED. Whether an AI mentions your business to somebody who never clicks is a completely different question, and we do not pretend to answer it. Anybody selling you a report that claims to is selling you a guess dressed up as a number.
Step by step
Open Analytics and find "How people found you".
Read the groups rather than the raw addresses underneath.
Watch the direction over a few weeks rather than the numbers on one day.
If it does not go to plan
Can I see what people searched for?
Not from here. Google stopped telling websites that years ago. Google Search Console, which is free and yours, is the only place that shows it.
Facebook sends me traffic but it shows as something odd.
Facebook and Instagram send visitors through their own link addresses. We translate the common ones back into names you recognise.