Why do I get lots of traffic from a bizarre keyword?
-
Bit of an odd one but I've been getting a large and steady stream of traffic over the last few months from a very random keyword that according to addwords figures shows "on data". Its our second biggest referring term only beaten by our brand name. We get more traffic from this term than keywords we have invested a lot of time in that show thousands of traffic volume in addwords. When looking at behavioral data its gets odder, a bounce rate of 98.11% time on site 2 seconds and page visits 1.02. So this traffic isn't real traffic and it's not real people. So my questions are, what is it? why do we get this random traffic, has anyone els noticed things like this and is it a problem?
I presume it must be something to do with some sort of spam but apart from that i'm stumped.
It's just one of those things that has been bugging me so I would appreciate any help.
Kind Regards
Paul
-
Paul,
- Have you linked the AdWords account to the GA account?
- Have you enabled Import Cost Data in AdWords?
- Make sure that query string parameters remain in the URL bar when you visit your destination URL.
- Have you tested to see if your GA cookies reset when visiting your 2nd or 3rd pages?
Adrian Vender
-
yeah I had just used the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool that pulls in data from the google search based tool and it shows "no data" across the board.
-
If you show up on the image results thats most likely your problem! Use the google keyword tool to see how much traffic that keyword gets
-
Sorry i should have mentioned in my first post that we do rank second for the term. But the term is so bizarre that I can not believe the traffic is real and also the bounce rate, time on site and so on are extremely abnormal. We do also show up in the image results.
-
easiest way to find out if this is the cause: find out what term the traffic is coming in from and type it into your search engine. I spent ages wonderig why I was getting all this traffic from obscure terms like 'pound sign' and 'stephen hawkings' until I realised I was ranking first for them in Google UK Image search
-
Yeah good point. The traffic for the term only comes from google.co.uk. Yahoo and Bing dont refer the keyword at all.
-
Anyway to dig in to see what search engine those referring keywords come from? Like craven22 said, it might be an image search.
-
Thanks. Hmmm maybe. How would you find out if someone was hotlinking to an image?
-
Thanks Steve, We are just using Google analytics .
-
Are you sure you aren't ranking high up for a popular image search in google? Most likely people searching for something then hotlinking your image
-
Sounds like a bot or scraper to me. That's strange because usually bots/scrapers don't execute javascript which is needed to show up in Google Analytics. What analytics package do you use?
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
-
GA4 account & property not showing in traffic property setup list.
Hi there, I've connected multiple client accounts to GA4 already, but three of our accounts that we have administrator rights to in GA4 are not showing up in our selectable accounts/properties list when logged in via Moz to add to the traffic settings area. Anyone else have this issue and find a fix?
Reporting & Analytics | | luminusagency0 -
Will noindex pages still get link equity?
We think we get link equity from some large travel domains to white label versions of our main website. These pages are noindex because they're the same URLs and content as our main B2C website and have canonicals to the pages we want indexed. Question is, is there REALLY link equity to pages on our domain which have "noindex,nofollow" on them? Secondly we're looking to put all these white label pages on a separate structure, to better protect our main indexed pages from duplicate content risks. The best bet would be to put them on a sub folder rather than a subdomain, yes? That way, even though the pages are still noindex, we'd get link equity from these big domains to www.ourdomain.com/subfolder where we wouldn't to subdomain.ourdomain.com? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | HTXSEO0 -
Why am i seeing google.inc in analytics as direct traffic? Bug?
Recently i have seen two clients sites see a spike in direct traffic coming from google.inc. Is this a bot/bug which i should filter out. Just a bit confused why google.inc has visited our clients site 676 times! Any insight would be great.
Reporting & Analytics | | BlueWren1 -
Gets traffic on both domain.dk and domain.dk/default.asp
Hi. Im runnning a couple of sites. And in my analytics/webmastertool I get both traffic on domain.dk and domain.dk/default.asp which are both essentially the same page. I'm pretty sure it would be better, if I somehow could make the default.asp "redirect" to "/". I dont wanna loose the linkjuice thou. Any smart suggestions for an easy fix? /Kasper
Reporting & Analytics | | KasperGJ0 -
Re-classifying a Traffic Source in Google Analytics
Hey All, I think it's inside of the Admin section of Google Analytics, right now I have a traffic source from the domain of indeed.ca that is being classified as Organic traffic when it should be classified as referring traffic, how can I tell Google Analytics that all traffic from this source should be classified as referral traffic and not organic traffic? Furthermore, after I make this change, will Google Analytics re-classify my past data so I can do a proper analysis? I can't remember how to do this and any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt1 -
Select Keywords Strategy
Hi, when planing a strategy for the keywords i am looking at the following parameters: 1. Using Google Analytics i check what are the queries that cause my website to appear in search results 2. I am trying to understand what is the message the website (the company) want to deliver 3. I am trying to find the best keywords that will have lower competition to minimize the costs The Q 1. Any other parameters that i missed? 2. What will be the best way for me to check the competition and the costs for each keyword before i select it? Thank you very.... SEOwiseUs
Reporting & Analytics | | iivgi0 -
Google Analytic - Is it possible to see which organic keyword triggered goals?
Hi, I am trying to see which of my Google organic keywords triggered my goals? In GA I click > Conversion > Goals > Overview > Source Medium (This then says where my goals came from but when I click Google / Organic it just brings me to the overview page of my organic traffic). Is it possible to see which organic keywords trigger goals?
Reporting & Analytics | | AdvanceSystems0 -
Keyword tracking using Advanced Segment
I would like to see visits for only and only the following 2 keywords using advanced segment in GA. logo design india and logodesign Here's how i set up the Advancned Segment - Keyword > Matches Regular Expression > logo design india|logodesign The problem is that advanced segment report is also displaying visits for keyword thelogodesigns. Have i set it up correctly ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050