Analytics oddity
-
This one has me a bit puzzled... I was just conducting a bit of routine analysis on a client's site, when I noticed avg. traffic doubled on one particular day. Now, this was easy to spot, since avg daily traffic for this site is 100 per day. The site also has approximately 100 pages of content. Here is the odd part... the spike was clearly attributed to Direct traffic and from a specific network in Palo Alto. The Bounce Rate was 100% and it appears that every page on the site was visited - very briefly.
Any clues as to what may have triggered this? A competitor maybe? An unkown bot?
I am looking forward to your thoughts.
-
I really would like to know the answer, because it happens in some of my sites too.
-
I agree. Don't think it's a bot. Can't believe I was so focused upon GA, I forgot about the raw server data! Unfortunately, the host just updated and IP info. I wanted to look at is no longer present.
-
I did just that, and you are right on the money. Upon drilling down, everything was the same. Strange thing is... I can't see one person accessing 100+ pages.
For the isolated "abnormal" visits in question - Bounce Rate was 100% - Avg. Visit - Duration was 00:00:00 - classified as Direct Traffic
-
I don't think so... why? From a non-technical perspective: I have not seen this sort of activity appear on other client accounts. For example, one domain I monitor has well over 1,000 pages indexed. If a bot crawled and GA included the crawl, the traffic spike would have been easily spotted.
-
I doubt it is an automated bot, as it would not fire GA traffic. Best way to determine what happened is to look at your server log for that specific day and analyse the raw traffic data.
Depending on the nature of the website, it could very well be a hack-attack or competitors looking at your site. You will be able to get some information from GA (i.e. OS and browser versions), but to really determine what happened, the server logs are your best bet.
-
I would be that if you drill down to the browser version, flash version, etc. that it'd also be identical. I've seen this once or twice, and for me, it turned out that it was one computer and either GA was messed up, or the browser was set oddly -- it was really one person visiting many pages on the site, but for whatever reason it showed in GA as multiple visits each going to one page. I can't say for sure that's what is happening for you, but that's what it was in my case (I happened to have a second analytics package and was able to see that it was truly the same user).
-
It sounds like a bot to me. Whose bot? Hmm...could be any bot that accessed your sitemap.
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
-
Google Analytics - Referral traffic being reported as Direct traffic
Hi, I have a link on my www homepage to another subdomain website. Both websites are served on https, and have independent Google Analytics properties. However, the traffic from the www site to the subdomain site is being reported as Direct, and not Referral traffic. Any ideas why? See image provided for context... RCn6HER
Reporting & Analytics | | RWesley1 -
Email traffic tracking in Google Analytics
Hello! I have a question about how to assure email traffic is properly tracked in GA > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. **First, some background... ** Our company (Wisconsin's largest group dental practice) is about to revamp the way we try to re-capture patients who don't have a future appointment set with us. Part of that process will include emails. Those emails will point back to our website to request an appointment. Now to the question... Is there anything special we should do to assure that links coming to the website and the resulting appointment request goal conversions track appropriately and appear under "Email" in the Default Channel Group of Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels area of GA? For example, should we use Campaign URL Builder to establish UTM links? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Erik
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO0 -
Does Universal Analytics auto generate events?
Hi Mozzers, I have been noticing for one of my clients that there are thousands of events generating which I never added a code snippet for ga('send', 'event', 'button', 'click', 'nav buttons', 4);. The code I am seeing instead is following the syntax **PDF FILE NAME.**I don't even use Tag Manager. So are these auto generated? Label names of files aren't great though so I still believe that adding that piece of snippet _ga('send', 'event', 'button', 'click', 'nav buttons', 4);_can still bring some added value. Do you think it still does? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
How to exclude IP from Google Analytic?
Hello Guys, I am admin of google analytic, i am trying to exclude traffic in google analytic from admin, view section then filter but not there is no button of save? Can anyone please help me? PFA of image. zOkvX1n.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | devdan0 -
Universal Analytics: Why does Google Organic appear as Direct traffic?
Hi there, When I enter the site via Google Search and follow myself via Real-Time Analytics I appear an organic visitor (which is good). When I browse and visit the site I still am an organic visitor. However, as soon as I fill in the contact form (gravity forms) and land on the "thank you page" I appear as a direct visitor with Google as the source. Since I have the thank you page set-up as a goal, Analytics incorrectly attributes these conversions to the direct medium instead of the organic medium. The tracking code has been installed on all the pages and all conversions are being recorded. What is going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | Robbern0 -
Analytics - content performance
Hi guys, is there any way to group specific pages together in analytics and just see how they have peroformed visit wise, etc? I need to group some resort guides all with different names, it's tedious going through each one manually. Help much appreciated as always!
Reporting & Analytics | | pauledwards0 -
X2 Google Analytics affect page rank ?
Hi there, If you had 2 Google Analytics Accounts one to the main site and another to the blog, could this affect the page position in Google? We've suddenly noticed a drop in our KWs and it was shortly after we added another Google Analytics Account. The blog has 68% Bounce rate and the main site has always been about 48%. Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks Paul
Reporting & Analytics | | webdesigncwd0 -
How do I set up Google Analytics to track paid visitors from Bing
When looking at Traffic Sources in Google Analytics, Google is broken out into paid and organic visits. I want to do the same with Bing. How do I do it?
Reporting & Analytics | | cpantages0