Sky Lancers: What is the deal?
-
For a few days now we are being stalked by a "referrer" site out of Bangladesh, called sky lancers dot net. Their home page is nothing but a login and password. All traffic comes from one invisible inner page. They don't seem to try to login, nor do they use PPC to get to the site. They send thousands of visitors a day.
Anyone has any idea what this site is trying to achieve and what their goal may be?
All they do is get the bounce rate to skyrocket, the time on the site to go down and the avg page views of course to go down as well, as they click out immediately after they hit the homepage.
Any suggestions on what to do about this practice? And what are they trying to achieve?
Thanks for your insights guys!
-
The visits however are for 85% new visitors, all with unique IP addresses. Don't really think it is a scraper, but it is well possible there is a connection somewhere out there.
Thanks http://gameershoe.com/ -
I know in the past when I would get suspicious traffic like that I would quickly take a spin around elance/odesk/etc. and often find a competitor had posted something like 'make me a site just like (specialshoes.net) but cheap and scrape all their products so they're already in a database'.
-
... There is a table on the web page (scroll down) which you may discover quite beneficial. It outlines the various pitfalls of various styles of neighborhood-precise URLs, you can see here. I'd count on this form of stuff to maintain actual for the newer provincial TLDs
-
Thanks Joanne!!! Great tip for those who have this problem occur as well.
In a nutshell, only your Analytics is out of wack. Your hosting server (usually) will not show increased traffic. Many newly launched sites are affected by a variety of similar 'referrers'
Personally, I ignored the referrer and it disappeared as sudden as it came, after one month. Exactly as the article suggests.
-
Saw an interesting article related to this sort of thing... they call it Analytics SPAM and have some suggestions for removing it from your reports:
http://www.businesshut.com/spam/google-analytics-referrer-spam/
-
As an update, those visits as we see them in Analytics are not hitting our servers. Not sure how they are doing this, but traffic does show in analytics but we do not see any spike on our servers.
We take the country out through filters at this point so we can at least review some true data.
Your question about how to ignore it after the fact can be done similar:
Go to Google Analytics > Custom Reports > Add Filter > EXCLUDE the country > Save
Now your GA will show all past results without those entries.
It is a custom report, but better than no data at all?
Hope this helps
-
I am seeing it as well. It is really making my analytics a mess, anyone know how to make Google analytics ignore it after the fact?
-
Yep, I found that as well. The "Paid To Click" is an old trick, but they are not coming in through PPC though. Adwords is not showing any sign either, nor is tracking of PPC. that toolbar is an interesting path I have to say.
Thanks for the research Keri!
-
It looks like it's related to a toolbar where people are paid to click on ads. Skylancers.net and skylancers.com appear to be connected, based on the whois info, and on this FB post http://www.facebook.com/pages/Skylancers/200579273364198. Check out the dot com site for some more info.
-
Great idea too, Valery.
The visits however are for 85% new visitors, all with unique IP addresses. Don't really think it is a scraper, but it is well possible there is a connection somewhere out there.
Thank you!
-
awesome answer Ryan, thank you! We blocked the referrers IP but that does not seem to make any difference (yet).
Just puzzled by a site that has no apparent meaning and thousands of people must have a login to that thing. Maybe it is a reroute from somewhere else... no clue.
Will give your advice a go tomorrow and surely will let you know the outcome.
Peter
-
Another thing to watch out for is see if someone is trying to snake your design/business model. I know in the past when I would get suspicious traffic like that I would quickly take a spin around elance/odesk/etc. and often find a competitor had posted something like 'make me a site just like (mysite.com) but cheap and scrape all their products so they're already in a database'.
If Bangladesh is nowhere near your customer base I'd do what Ryan suggests as well and block em.
-
Hi Peter,
I sympathize with your situation. Since the home page is blank with just a login feature you have no information about the site or its purpose. A Google search for the site shows nothing but the home page. A WHOIS search shows the site owner is private.
There is no way to know the reason behind the traffic. Someone could have shared a "free stuff" post and for whatever reason provided a link to your site. When users arrive at your site they are of course disappointed then leave.
Some options:
-
contact the site owner via the WHOIS e-mail. Ask the site owner to remove the link.
-
block all traffic from Bangladesh. This option will work if all or most of the traffic is from that site.
-
block all traffic which shows that site as a referrer. I have never implemented such a solution but your web host can likely offer options in this regard. You may have to implement a firewall.
Best wishes
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to deal with product mark up automatically generated by Yoast?
Let's assume there's a website for nursery. Now they have listed plants and trees as their product now yoast is generating product structured data because of that search console is reporting errors in markup says "Either "offers", "review", or "aggregateRating" should be specified" Reviews can be fixed because of genuine reviews and ratings but trees doesn't have sku, gtin8, gtin13, gtin14 or mpn" so we can't add this information. Because of this every product listing shows an error in structured data. What's the possible fix to get rid of these errors? **Note: I tried using snip to override Yoast Schema but using another plugin is not the first choice. **
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ravi_Rana0 -
My Brand new website shows 79% spam Score, what is the reason and how should I deal with this?
Hi, I have just launched my website 1 month before and I have used all paid images, Uniquely written contents, Everything is genuine for better SEO experience in the future. The actual problem is its showing spam by 79% in MOZ bar, I don't have a single link on my website also my content is unique, Images are unique. Why its showing so much spam on this brand new website? Can you please help me? I am very stressed due to this problem.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rahat640 -
Dealing with Dodgy Looking Traffic
Hi there I am really hoping someone can help. The site I run has started receiving traffic from the US (we are a UK run firm who don't ship overseas). Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a massive problem but the traffic is coming directly to lots of pages and instantly bouncing. I am worried this is going to negatively impact my rankings as drop off rate and conversions are getting hammered by this 'fake traffic'. The attached image shows the traffic for the homepage but its happening on every page with hundreds of hits bouncing and hurting my stats. Is there any way of dealing with this or reporting it to an authority or even Google itself? Any help would be greatly appreciated. George 7vprsJo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BrinvaleBird0 -
How to deal with link echoes of former hacked websites?
Hi all, I'd know which is the best way to deal with link echoes of former hacked websites that Webmaster tool reports. to clarify: when you download the backlink report from Webmaster tool you'll have a list of backlinks discovered, but if you follow one of those links you will see that on that page there is no link to your website. the source code is also clean, no hidden links or other dodgy technique. Since that the topic is usually miles away from my industry I have to assume at some point that site has been hacked by a spammer who placed that backlink. In this case what should I do? Ignore it, disavow the domain or what? Moreover, which is the best procedure when you have to face a site which points a lot of backlinks from only its sub-domains? For example: this dodgy spammy website : http://px949z32.com/ is apparently a desert, but when you do site:http://px949z32.com/ you'll discover 55,200 results! Would be it be enough to just disavow the root domain http://px949z32.com/?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | madcow78
As I don't want to wait too long before taking any action, my plan is to disavow all those domains without any mercy, although I can't find a current backlink in one of their pages. I will do this, as at the minute my concern is they will be hacked again and I have to face the same issue again and again Thanks to all, P.0 -
What's the deal with Yext?
Ok, the "SEO" in me says don't sign my clients up for this. But their ads are EVERYWHERE. All the time. Is this bad/good? thoughts? Have you ever used Yext? I can't find a review online that I don't think is biased. Should I trust my gut on this one and pass?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Corporate Spam - How do you deal with them?
Seeklearning.com.au - I don't see why they should be dominating the SERPs here in Australia, except for the fact that the have 1 million+ links from 4 or 5 corporate affiliates (Yahoo, MSN, etc). But i thought Google caps the amount of sidewide links from one domain? Or do they make an exception in some cases? Note: if you're looking at their profile with Majestic, you need to see their backlink history. There was a massive spike in linking root domains recently from spam. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andrep0 -
How will Google deal with the crosslinks for my multiple domain site
Hi, I can't find any good answer to this question so I thought, why not ask Moz.com ;-)! I have a site, let's call it webshop.xx For a few languages/markets, Deutsch, Dutch & Belgian, English, French. I use a different TLD with a different IP for each of these languages, so I'll end up with: webshop.de, webshop.nl, webshop.be, webshop.co.uk, webshop.com & webshop.fr They all link to eachother and every subpage that is translated from the other site gets a link as well from the other languages, so: webshop.com/stuff links to webshop.de/stuff My main website, webshop.com gets links from every other of these domain which Open Site Explorer as well as Majestic SEO sees as an external link. (this is happening) My question. How will Google deal in the long-run with the crosslinks coming from these domains? some guesses I made: I get full external links juice (content is translated so unique?) I get a bit of the juice of an external link They are actually seen as internal links I'll get a penalty Thanks in advance guys!!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pimarketing0 -
Spammy Links (from .ru) pointing to my domain! How to deal with it?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce store - I am just looking at the apache logs and I am finding a lot of spammy links that have been referrers to our pages - when I check the links, I cannot find our URL in an HREF on their page so I presume they may be using some country based cloaking? These are the domains that are targeting specific pages on our site:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs2010
http://3xru.ru/
http://saldoconsult.ru/
http://euro-casino.ru/casino/
http://delaymoney.maroderi.ru/
http://intimhot.ru/ How to deal with this? Our site is about cookware and they seem to be pointing these links to very specific products and categories. Never seen anything like this before, help would be appreciated. Thanks, B0