Negative SEO Click Bot Lowering My CTR?
-
I am questioning whether one of our competitors is using a click bot to do negative SEO on our CTR for our industry's main term.
Is there any way to detect this activity?
Background:
We've previously been hit by DoS attacks from this competitor, so I'm sure their ethics/morals wouldn't prevent them from doing negative SEO.
We sell an insurance product that is only offered through broker networks (insurance agents) not directly by the insurance carriers themselves. However, our suspect competitor (another agency) and insurance carriers are the only ones who rank on the 1st page for our biggest term. I don't think the carrier sites would do very well since they don't even sell the product directly (they have pages w/ info only)
Our site and one other agency site pops onto the bottom of page one periodically, only to be bumped back to page 2. I fear they are using a click bot that continuously bounces us out of page 1...then we do well relatively to the other pages on page 2 and naturally earn our way back to page 1, only to be pushed back to page 2 by the negative click seo...is my theory.
Is there anything I can do to research whether my theory is right or if I'm just being paranoid?
-
Thanks! I figured as much, but I wanted to hear it from another guru rather than assuming on my own.
I appreciate it
-
Google do not use it in a page's ranking (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU). And since the referral spam is never actually on your site, but only activating your tracking code it shouldn't hurt you.
Besides, I don't think I've seen a site out there who hasn't been hit by referral spam. Some haven't been hit as hard, but still have seen it to some degree. Just set up some filters & segments so you can analyse on the real data. I found it very helpful to read this and this.
-
Thanks! I agree with everything you said. We'll be sure to remove and disavow any negative links.
As you can see from the images I posted above, we are getting quite a bit of referral spam that we need to address.
Any idea if the referral spam can negatively impact Google measurement of user experience / dwell time? I don't simply want to block it in analytics if it is poorly reflecting on our site.
-
Hi there
From an organic standpoint, I am really not sure - maybe someone can take a look for you there.
You could (and really should) check your referral spam (here's another resource) - from there you can remove and disavow possible links that are hurting your profile.
But again, from an organic standpoint, I am not entirely sure, and even then, I am not sure how you can prove it's malicious without hard proof.
I would focus on the links above and see what moves the needle for you. That's really the most you can do from my vantage point at the moment.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Great links Patrick!
These are all things we're constantly working on. The info on dwell time was of particular interest. Thanks!
We might be wearing tin foil hats a bit, but the past actions of the competition have unfortunately led us down that path of thinking.
Is there any way for us to try to confirm whether click bots are being used to artificially boost the rankings of sites for a particular keyword? I can't think of any way to detect that activity.
-
Here are what sites it appears to be coming from.
-
Great tip Tim! You were right on the money. Thank you so much
We did find Russian bots with awful user experience hitting our site starting in April. My webmaster is looking in how to handle this. Any suggestions to get him started?
-
I don't believe they are clicking on my site and providing Google data that I have a bad user experience.
Instead, I think they may be providing an artificially good experience for their site and others that don't directly sell our product. As a result, my user experience is lowered relative to the others.
Once again, it's just a theory based on their prior behavior and what is actually showing in the SERPS, but something I am concerned about. If I'm right, I don't believe I'll be able to detect, nor do anything about it short of having my own click bot, which I won't do.
-
I know this may not be the case, but have you checked your site analytics to see if it is being hit by a number of these Russian bot / crawler style entities that have been doing the rounds of late, if so this could be another of the reasons you are seeing additional bounced number growing.
I found I had a few and over the last few weeks I have made an effort to remove a lot of this negative referral traffic and crawlers.
-
Hi LSlversen
I like your thinking here - to me it sounds like what your users are searching and what they are getting aren't meeting expectations. I would look into that and make sure you are on the right path with what kind content / expectations you are setting.
Here's a bit of reference to what LSlversen is chatting about. Check it out. I would take a step back, ask some hard questions, and prioritize on how you want to attack issues. You'll be better off - I highly doubt there are click bots happening.
Hope this helps a bit more!
-
I guess that's the problem...there are thousands of reasons of why the rankings are what they are and there is no way to determine if a click bot is being used. Is there?
Even if one is being used, I suppose the only thing I could do, is use one myself to counteract it, which I don't like the sound of.
-
Without knowing all the details of the case, maybe it has something to do with searcher intent? Seeing as it's only websites who don't sell the product, maybe that's exactly what the searchers are looking for?
If people who search it are clicking and spending a long time on the top results that are full of info, then it might signal to Google that they found a good result and more of that kind (information pages) will come up higher.
Again, I don't know if this is the case, but it might be a possible explanation for it.
-
Thanks for the reply Patrick
If we had 100% proof, we would have reported to Google and the FBI. Unfortunately, like most DoS attacks, it could not be traced back to anyone.
We rank well for every other industry term. The fact that sites that don't even directly sell the product make me question if something weird is going on here. My dream scenario (as is theirs I'm sure) would be to be on the first page, as the lone website that actually sells my product directly. The other sites don't rank well for any other keyword in our industry...just the biggest volume keyword.
I sent you a private message with our URL and the keyword.
-
Hi there
Can you provide a URL for your company that we can take a look into? Also, do you have proof (whether current or previously as you stated) that this other company has been attacking your site? If so, you should be reporting that to Google. I wouldn't do this though unless you are ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE this company or SEO team is doing this, and you can PROVE it. If you can't, then don't.
If you could though, please provide your URL. As you said you could be being paranoid and it could be a number of things such as your:
On-site SEO
Content
Backlinks Industry & keyword difficulty
etc....that could be hurting your rankings. It'd be easier to gauge with a URL.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Does same description in the directories of all affect SEO or not? - But unique on the website
Hi, I would like to do some directories. When I checked with a person for his recent work, he has given the same description in 50 directories he has done for a client. Does this affect SEO or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnuManish0 -
.com geotagging redirect to subdomains - will it affect SEO?
Hi guys, We have a .com domain and we've got geoIP on it, so UK goes to .co.uk and USA goes to .com/us We're just migrating over to another platform so we're thinking of keeping a "dummy" server just to do this geoIP pointing for us. Essentially .com will just point over to the right place and hold a specific .com/abc (which is generic for everyone worldwide) Current Scenario:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Infruition
.com (Magento + geoIP)
.com/us (US Magento)
.co.uk (UK - geoIP redirect to Shopify)
.com/abc (sits on Magento server) Wanted Scenario:
.com - used for GEOIP and a specific .com/abc (for all users)
.co.uk (UK) - Shopify eCom
.com/us -> migration to us.xx.com (USA) - Shopify eCom I just wanted to know if this will affect our rankings on google? Also, any advice as to the best practises here would be great. Thanks! Nitesh0 -
Should I delete older posts on my site that are lower quality?
Hey guys! Thanks in advance for thinking through this with me. You're appreciated! I have 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content that has been a large focus of mine over the last couple years. They're incredibly important to my business. That said, less experienced me did what I thought was best by hiring a freelance writer to create extra content to interlink them and add relevancy to the overall site. Looking back through everything, I am starting to realize that this extra content, which now makes up 1/3 my site, is at about 65%-70% quality AND only gets a total of about 250 visitors per month combined -- for all 384 articles. Rather than spending the next 9 months and investing in a higher quality content creator to revamp them, I am seeing the next best option to remove them. From a pros perspective, do you guys think removing these 384 lower quality articles is my best option and focusing my efforts on a better UX, faster site, and continual upgrading of the 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content? I'm honestly at a point where I am ready to cut my losses, admit my mistakes, and swear to publish nothing but gold moving forward. I'd love to hear how you would approach this situation! Thanks 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ryj0 -
Effect of same country server hosting on SEO
Hello all, my question is if my website targets a country abc and I have server in the same country abc compared to suppose I shift my server to country xyz can it effect SEO and ranking of my website ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adnan11010 -
Seo back linking proposal review
Hi guys, below is a proposal i received from someone on freelancer.com for some seo building. Is this really all it takes? Obviously done overtime but basically is this it aside from the usual basics onsite keywords, urls, artciles, content etc. This is a the proposal for $250 (some are cheaper but almost the same details as below). This is one of the top seo people on freelancers.com and they all have good reviews. Is this basically it? Shell out $100 bucks or more a month to someone who will just post stuff all over the internet. It just seems all very simple, what is $100 bucks a month to stay at #1. Is there any real questions i should ask to make sure i am not just throwing my money away? I would like to recommend the following services for attaining better search results for the website. 1)Press Release Submissions
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | topclass
2)Social bookmarking submissions
3)Drip Feed Article Links - 100 Article submissions everyday for 25 days
4)Article directory submissions
5)Link directory submissions
6)Blog Post Submissions(All Blogs have PR1 to PR6)
7)Wiki Page Submissions(.EDU and .GOV Sites Included) PR of the directories, social bookmarking websites, Blogs, wiki pages and Article directories are from PR0 to PR8.
Most of them are in the range of PR1 to PR4. If you are interested in the above services then these are the details about those services. 1)Press release Submissions - We will write 3 press release and submit them to 25 press release websites.
Submitting press release gets the news to Google news, Yahoo news etc..
Please note we even submit to Paid press release websites like PRBuzz, SBWire, pressdoc etc.. 2)Social Bookmarking submissions - I will also submit your website to 150 social bookmarking websites.
Here are the example of social bookmarking websites.
www.digg.com
www.furl.net
After we finish submitting to social bookmarking websites we will then create rss feeds with approved link URL's and ping them so that links get indexed. 3)Drip Feed Article submissions - We will be writing one article.
Everyday we will submitting the article to 100 different websites.
We will be submitting for 25 days.
100 submissions x 25 days = 2500 submissions.
In each article submissions we can use 2 links to the website. 4)Article directory submissions - We will write 5 articles.
Each article will be around 500 words.
Then we will submit them to 300 different article directories. That means 5 articles x 300 article directories = 1500 article submissions.
In each article we can use 2 links to the website.
1500 x 2 Links.
I have experience in submitting articles to article directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 1000 articles to article directories.
I will also create separate accounts with article directories wherever possible. 5)Link directory submissions - I have a list of 1300 directories.
I will submit your website to these directories.
I have experience in submitting to link directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 2500 websites.
All the submission work is done manually.
All these directories provide one way links. 6)Blog Post Submissions(700 PR1 to PR6 Blogs) - We will write 1 article.
we spin and post to 700 PR1 to PR5 blogs.
We can spin the article, title of article and links
You will be given a confirmation when complete, and a code to search backlinks in the search engines.
They are hosted on 650 different C Class IPs! 7)Wiki Page Submissions - Get 200+ wiki site contextual backlinks (3 per posted article) from a range of PR 0 to 8 wiki sites including over 30 US .EDU and US .GOV sites.
I will also ping Them.0 -
Does Anybody Know Who Interflora's SEO Company Is (Or Was)?
In light of the recent penalty put on the Interflora site, does anybody know who their SEO company is or was (or if they were doing it in house)? Also, do you think SEO companies that are responsible for things like this should be named and shamed?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Dust.js Client-side JavaScript Templates & SEO
I work for a commerce company and our IT team is pushing to switch our JSP server-side templates over to client-side templates using a JavaScript library called Dust.js Dust.js is a JavaScript client-side templating solution that takes the presentation layer away from the data layer. The problem with front-end solutions like this is they are not SEO friendly because all the content is being served up with JavaScript. Dust.js has the ability to render your client-side content server-side if it detects Google bot or a browser with JavaScript turned off but I’m not sold on this as being “safe”. Read about Linkedin switching over to Dust.js http://engineering.linkedin.com/frontend/leaving-jsps-dust-moving-linkedin-dustjs-client-side-templates http://engineering.linkedin.com/frontend/client-side-templating-throwdown-mustache-handlebars-dustjs-and-more Explanation of this: “Dust.js server side support: if you have a client that can't execute JavaScript, such as a search engine crawler, a page must be rendered server side. Once written, the same dust.js template can be rendered not only in the browser, but also on the server using node.js or Rhino.” Basically what would be happening on the backend of our site, is we would be detecting the user-agent of all traffic and once we found a search bot, serve up our web pages server-side instead client-side to the bots so they can index our site. Server-side and client-side will be identical content and there will be NO black hat cloaking going on. The content will be identical. But, this technique is Cloaking right? From Wikipedia: “Cloaking is a SEO technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable.” Matt Cutts on Cloaking http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355 Like I said our content will be the same but if you read the very last sentence from Wikipdia it’s the “present but not searchable” that gets me. If our content is the same, are we cloaking? Should we be developing our site like this for ease of development and performance? Do you think client-side templates with server-side solutions are safe from getting us kicked out of search engines? Thank you in advance for ANY help with this!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bodybuilding.com0 -
Help for a complete SEO newbie!
Hi all, I've just joined seomoz today to try and further my very young education on SEO. My major problem is i need my site to rank high in local search engines but feel that none of the customers read much of the content as i am a landscaper and feel they just search "landscaping in Newcastle" and are immediatly looking for a contact number to arrange a free estimate. I dont do any online sales, its just to generate leads. I've spent alot of time building a better site than my local competitors but they still out rank me on alot of keywords i.e. "Driveways in Gateshead" My question is do i keep adding more and more content hoping this will work long term or do i link build with anchor text etc or both? I cannot believe they still out rank me when i feel i have more links more anchor text and a load more origional content and images. I think it may be that my site is still under 1 year old. I feel i am boucing from content to link building then trying something else without any real knowlegde of what i really should be doing or what should be the priority at this young stage for my site. I have managed to get on page 1 of google for most of my keywords in local searches ( obviously not national) but still feel its been more down to luck and effort than actually knowing what i am doing when it comes to site and offsite optimization Any help, tips etc would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | totaldriveways0