Turkish Invasion? Massive influx of non-english traffic
-
Last month, a client of mine has had a very large increase in irrelevant traffic. This traffic is all being sent by Google from mostly eastern Europe, but also from Egypt and Brazil. The largest influx is from Turkey.
The traffic is all landing on only two URL's. The magnitude of this traffic is about 350 visits per day. The main keywords sending traffic are:
- müzik indirme programları (Turkish which translates to "music download programs")
- تحميل برنامج اوبرا (Arabic translates to "download Opera")
- program za skidanje muzike (Bosnian for "program for downloading music")
My client is a small nonprofit summer music festival (with a strong emphasis on Opera music) so some of the on-page at least relates to these keywords. But the site is entirely in English.
Since the words are related to a traditional sketchy vertical I'm worried that my client site has been hacked. Though, for the life of me, I can't imagine what anyone can gain from this.
My questions are:
Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
What are the potential ramifications of this irrelevant traffic? (I'm worried about the traffic slowing down the site, I'm also worried that 350 visits per day and a 95% bounce rate is going to hurt my clients reputation with search engines)
What can be done about it?
Thank you for any insight you can provide.
-
Hi Everett,
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer.
I think you are right that the main concern here is security. Great ideas on how to screen for this. There is no hacked message in the SERPs. I don't currently have access to the their GWT but will make it a priority. I did look at the source code in Google's cache and there is no sign of these terms. There is not a single instead of "download" which is a common characteristic to all these queries.
It could be just an algorithmic hiccup. The site does use some fancy characters to describe the Operas that they produce. One example is the "i" with grave accent in the Opera _Così Fan Tutte. _I suppose it is possible that with enough repetition of these types of characters Google may think the site has some relevant non-english content.
Thanks again for the thoughts. Hope everything is going well at seOverflow.
-
Hello Jesse,
I doubt 350 visits a day would slow down the site unless it is hosted on a shared server with a much-less-than-stellar hosting company. The high bounce rate on a few terms shouldn't affect rankings for the entire site, but would only affect those particular terms. If the bounce rate was that high on the majority of terms I'd be more concerned.
However, I do think you are correct to be suspicious of hacking. Have you tried looking at Google's cache of those pages, viewing the source of the cache, and searching for the phrases you are concerned with? Have you received any messages from Google either in the SERPs or in GWT related to the site being hacked?
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 check search engine and direct traffic of Mobile?
Hi Guys, I want to check search engine traffic or direct traffic of mobile, how to check in google analytic?
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Exclude brand Traffic
Hello everyone, Whenever any user searches for our website using brand keywords, session count should comes under direct source instead of Google/organic. Or in simple language, We want that all our brand keyword search traffic should be consider as Direct Traffic instead of organic. Is it possible in Google Analytics? If yes then please share the steps of doing it
Reporting & Analytics | | Obbserv0 -
Self-Reffering Traffic After upgrading to Universal Analytics
Backstory: We have always had an issue with self-referring traffic but in waiting for the UA upgrade we put it on the backburner for getting fixed. We have now upgraded to UA and I was under the impression that GA would automatically exclude the domain associated with a property as a referral source. However this is not what I am seeing under my referral traffic source. With 10 websites having issues with this I need some help. Should I use the referral exclusion list? Also on a handful of our sites we have region specific URLs, I am also seeing these come in as self-referring traffic. I should also mention that about 85% of our sales are being attributed to the self-referring traffic. Here are two sites for example sake: ZootSports.com and K2snowboarding.com
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
Google Analytics: How to Track Blog Traffic that Enter the Purchase Funnel?
I've been trying to figure this out for awhile, but I have had no luck. The current ecommerce store that I work for is trying to find out how to track how many people coming in via the blog are converting/buying. The site lives on Magento and the blog is on wordpress and they both use the same Google Analytics code. Site URL: http://website.com/ Blog URL: http://website.com/blog Is there anyway to do this so you can see which landing pages are driving conversions? If not, Is it possible to set up Google Analytics to show conversions and revenue coming from people who enter through blog directory?
Reporting & Analytics | | Erik-M0 -
Why would our client's site be receiving significant levels of organic traffic for a keyword they do not rank for?
We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?
Reporting & Analytics | | mrdavidingram0 -
Huge Traffic Drop?
I am seeing a huge 30-40% traffic drop which started around 8-9 PM EST last night. I am compare the stats of today with last Saturday and the drop is significant. I am checking it in Google Analytics and Clicky and both report the same. The Adsense impressions drop also show the same. The rankings of my top keywords seem to be fine. I re-checked them using ranktracker for Google US, UK and others. I don't understand what has happened here. Anyone else seeing the drop? Is there a Google Panda update underway?
Reporting & Analytics | | abhim120 -
Standard % of nonbranded organic search traffic?
I am working on developing goals for 2012. I will be doing several SEO projects, including one on a website for study abroad programs. Currently, nonbranded organic search is 15.49% of our visits and in 2010, it was 15.02%. I am wondering if anyone has any advice or knows of a benchmark percentage that could help me set an attainable goal. Thank you!!
Reporting & Analytics | | CIEEwebTeam0 -
Exclude Traffic from India
i would like to exclude all traffic coming from India using Advanced Segment in Google Analytics. How do i go about it ? Will it be applied to future traffic also ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050