US traffic falsely inflating traffic figures and bounce rate.
-
Hi fellow Mozzers!
We're handling the digital marketing for a UK-based franchise of a Canadian SaaS company, and I've noticed that a large proportion of their traffic has been coming from the US (not the majority, but enough to skew the figures).
The Canadian arm of the business deals with the US market, but the majority, if not all, is direct traffic which seems to suggest they've seen the web address somewhere (not sure where though). Is there a search-friendly way to move this traffic back to the Canadian site? I know I can set up a filter for US traffic so it stops distorting the stats we're seeing (which I have now done), but my worry is this is causing a high bounce rate that may be impacting Google's perception of the site quality. The traffic has a 100% bounce rate (not surprisingly), so if we could find a best practice way of sending them to the Canadian site, that would be great.
My first thought was a screen that appears for US traffic prompting them to the Canadian site, but presumably this would still count as a bounce as they're only on one page?
Any help much appreciated!
Cheers guys,
Nick -
There are few other reasons why bounce rate from Google Analytics doesn't affect ranking if you think about it not everyone uses GA, so that wouldn't be a fair measure. Another reason is the spam, most of it doesn't even get to your page, so there is no interaction whatsoever leaving fake data, and by now Google is more than aware of it.
However, you are right, as you mention the algorithm Google uses is complex and constantly evolving, so there might be another way to measure the time spent on your page after a search, for example, the back button of the browser.
So we can split it if the high bounce rate comes from fake traffic/spam in GA, then there is nothing to worry about. If it is from valid traffic, then it shouldn't be taken lightly since Google might be using other ways to measure it rather than GA.
Again Google knows the one and only truth, so we can only make educated guesses based on what we see
Carlos
-
Hi Carlos.
Thanks for the quick response. We've certainly told our clients historically that, while bounce rate is something to bear in mind, it doesn't impact rankings and on certain pages is the only real outcome (depending on what the page is aiming to achieve).
But the more I read, the more it implies it is a stat that can have an impact following the various Google quality algorithms - and I see this video is from 2010, so I'm guessing the situation may have changed by now?
As for the link to the tutorial on spamming, very useful, I'll look into where they're coming from.
Assuming there's no impact on either organic or PPC, I'll set up a filter and leave it at that - but it would still be useful to have a best practice way to send this traffic, if it's real, to the proper geographic site.
Nick.
-
Hi Nick,
I'm assuming you are seeing that on Google Analytics. First of all you don't need to worry about ranking on Google since they don't take into consideration any metric from GA. Here is what Matt Cutts says about it.
Second there is a good chance that this spike of direct traffic is caused by spam, check your referrals and see if you find free-social-buttons or any other unusual referrer. If you do, then that is the cause of the high bounce rate.
To stop the spam, you should create a filter based on your hostnames in GA. Excluding USA won't do much since the spam can com from many countries including Canada. If you need more information, this article will help you,
Unusual spike of direct traffic (Spam)
Hope it helps,
Carlos
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 Rank A UK Website On Google.com (US)
Hi, I've done some research on this but couldn't find any definitive answer I can trust! We have a client who resides in the UK. They have '.com' domain, hosted on a UK server, using UK spelling. Their business objective for this year is to expand in the USA, including the opening of a warehouse over there. They are wanting us to rank their website on both Google.co.uk and Google.com (North America); besides changing the geolocation settings in GWT's, and building links from .com websites is there anything else we can do to increase their visibility on Google.com? Many thanks in advance, appreciated!
International SEO | | Webpresence
Lee.0 -
How do you get the "real" organic traffic from direct traffic?
Please check the following article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/study-shows-organic-search-responsible-64-web-traffic/111791/ I hope you guys have some ideas on how to extract the "real" organic traffic from direct. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | zpm20140 -
Direct traffic is up 2100% (due to a bot/crawler I believe)
Hi, The direct traffic to website www.webgain.dk has increased by over 2100% recently. I can see that most of it is from US (my target audience is in Denmark and the website is in danish).
International SEO | | WebGain
What can I do about this? All this traffic gives my website a bounce rate of 99.91% for direct traffic. I believe it is some sort of bot/crawler. 2100percentboost.png0 -
How to get EU visitors to .co.uk and US visitors to .com
Hi all Re: www.explanar.com and www.explanar.co.uk We have developed a website for the US and UK, with a shop on each. Each site has a network of countries they can export to. US sells and ships to US, South America, Caribbean and so on UK sells and ships to UK, Europe, and Africa, etc Currently, visitors from Germany (.de) searching for phrases "Explanar", or "golf swing trainer" get the .com (US) site. They cannot buy from this site, so we have added a message to tell them to go to the UK site (.co.uk, but what I really want is for the European visitors to find the UK site only. .com is the original URL, but with new content
International SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
.co.uk has just been set up In the long run, we will set up .de URLs with German language, and other countries will follow, but not all. Any thoughts would be great. Thanks
Scott0 -
SEO rates in Brazil
This question is for SEOs working in Brazil (please feel perfectly free to reply in Portuguese). I am an independent Local Search consultant living and working in France and would like to get an approximate idea of the range of SEO rates charged in Brazil by independent SEOs. As is the case in any country, I'm sure that rates vary significantly in Brazil. My goal is simply to get an idea of that range. Thanks very much. Ken Fagan (www.kenfagan.com)
International SEO | | Mindful0 -
Moving British site to the US... who will have .com? US or UK?
We are the UK's first baby social commerce site launched in Nov 2011. We're doing quite well and are looking at expanding to the US. However I'm not sure what advice you'd give me in terms of internationalising the site. I see three options on how to deal with the URL structure? Make US site as .com as it will be my main source of revenue for the long run and redirect all British traffic to .co.uk Have .com for both UK and US but have the URL as either: us.babyhuddle.com or as babyhuddle.com/us/. Same thing for the UK Another option? Would love to hear the feedback from you guys. Thanks, Walid
International SEO | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
How do you submit US based news on Google News US from the UK?
How do you go about submitting US news (based in the UK) to get indexed on Google News and show up in the US rather then the UK?
International SEO | | CameronT0 -
Results in Google.co.uk when viewing from US?
If I search Google.co.uk from the United States, will I get the same or different results compared to searching from the UK? If different, what can I use to see the same results as if I am in the UK? web proxy? Thanks for the help!
International SEO | | GSWInbound0