Direct Traffic has Drastically Increased

[RuchiPardal]

Hi,

I have noticed in Google analytics that direct traffic of one of my website is increased drastically. I didn't participate in Email Marketing or any other paid campaigns however direct traffic is continuously increasing. I checked all sources, locations, browsers, filters etc but didn't get any findings.

Please help.

[erickcalderon]

Hi Ruchi,

Take a look at this article that shows you how to add an exclude filter in GA that will exclude spam traffic from your reports: https://www.optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-removing-referrer-spam-google-analytics/

You can also set up a second filter to make sure that the traffic hitting your site is actually trying to access your host name as opposed to hitting your GA tracking code. Check out this article to see how to do that: https://www.distilled.net/resources/quick-fix-for-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/

We had a bunch of ghost spam and referer spam on our sites hit by free-share-buttons and free-social-buttons. These 2 filters knocked those numbers out of our reports. The crazy thing is trying to explain to your client that those visits are not real visits and that some aren't even hitting your server, they are just hitting your GA code. Once you put in these 2 filters you can see your true traffic. Keep an eye on your refer info to add new spam referers as they appear in your reports.

Once you see your true traffic, you will also get better metrics for your bounce rate and time on page etc...

Hope that helps! Message me if you need help setting up a filter.

Cheers!
-Erick

[RuchiPardal]

Ok David.

Thanks for you time. Much appreciated.

[O2C]

That almost certainly indicates Spam to me, there isn't much more of an indication for Direct traffic.

I'd suggest applying the filter and seeing what happens over the next couple of days and if it is still happening would require further investigation.

[RuchiPardal]

Bounce Rate is 97.32% with 00:00:18 avg session duration.

[O2C]

What sort of bounce rate are you getting from the Direct Traffic?

[RuchiPardal]

Thanks for your respond. I have crosschecked and found no spam traffic. You can check the snapshot of the traffic.

0RoJY2A

[O2C]

If the bounce rate is incredibly high this could be a form of spam, it has been on the rise recently.

The way to filter it out of your analytics is to create an 'Include' filter.

You can read a MOZ blog post on it here with instructions on how to create the filter: https://moz.com/blog/stop-ghost-spam-in-google-analytics-with-one-filter

We have used it and it worked for us