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
-
If website users don't accept GDPR cookie consent, does that prevent GA-GTM from tracking pageviews and any traffic from that user that would cause significant traffic decreases?
I've been doing a lot research on GDPR impact and implementation with GTM-GA for clients, but it's been 12 months since GDPR has gone live I haven't found anything on how GA traffic has been impacted if users don't accept cookie consent. However, I'm personally seeing GA accounts taking huge losses in traffic since implementing GDPR cookie solutions (because GTM/GA tags aren't firing until cookies are accepted). Is it common for websites to see significant decreases in traffic due to too many users not accepting cookie consent? Are there alternative solutions to avoid traffic loss like that and still maintain GDPR compliance? It seems to me that the industry underestimated how many people won't accept cookie consent. Most of the documentation and articles around GDPR's start (May 2018) didn't foresee or cover that aspect properly, everything seems to be technically focused with the assumption that if implemented properly most people would accept cookie consent, but I'm personally not seeing that trend and it's destroying GA data (lost traffic, minimal source attribution, inaccurate behavior data, etc). Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Kickboard2 -
Alternative tools for Keyword Traffic
Hi There, Wondering if anyone has any other tools they would recommend using for finding out keyword traffic on websites. Currently (and I'm sure like most), my website is connected to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. My biggest frustration becomes the "(not set)" variable that appears when I go to review the keywords section. It's always such a large number and I have no way of finding out what people might be typing in and coming across my website. Of course, I understand the privacy factor as to why Google must do this but it's certainly difficult to analyze what's working and what's not. Any tips, tricks or suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks, Lindsay
Reporting & Analytics | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Does PPC affect SEO Traffic?
Last week my website (www.cooke.co.uk) started PPC advertising with Google. This has been successful in increasing the amount of overall traffic to the site. However, since we started the PPC advertising, our traffic from organic search has decreased significantly. Our rankings haven't changed dramatically enough to warrant such a decrease. Has anyone else been in a situation where organic traffic has dropped as a result of launching a paid campaign? What did you do to rectify it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Can't seem to rank for keyword "home care grand rapids" - need some advice
I am trying to rank for "home care grand rapids" and am having a really difficult time. My site: http://healthcareassociates.net has better backlinks, keywords and other seo markers than my competitors but I still can't seem to rank. The keyword and associated keywords (home care grand rapids michigan, home health care grand rapids, etc.) are only 31-33% difficulty and my site/page rank is better than the leading sites. What gives? Todd
Reporting & Analytics | | t1kuslik0 -
Why am i getting a flux of increase in Impressions on my site & then it decreases
They guys. Hope everyone is having a great week. I wanted to get some inputs from you guys in regards to what is happening to my site that i quite don't understand. Every month or so i get this influx of high visibility with impressions for my keywords and then the impressions go away but my rankings still keep going up. Has anyone experienced this before and can give me some insight on what is going . Why do i get such a big jump and then it dies off only to return again a month later or 2 months later. I know you guys want probably some info from my site or from analytics or webmaster tools so i will provide as much as i can . For now i have included a screen shot. ScreenShot2013-06-04at31220PM_zps0d02f5fc.png ScreenShot2013-06-04at31134PM_zps5bb81b68.png ScreenShot2013-06-04at31134PM_zps5bb81b68.png ScreenShot2013-06-04at31220PM_zps0d02f5fc.png
Reporting & Analytics | | BizDetox0 -
Figuring Out the Source of "direct traffic" by looking at landing page parameters
I have a client who runs an e-commerce website, and I noticed that 40% of his traffic and 25% of his sales are all attributable to Direct Traffic. At first, I tried to solve this problem by tagging all of the previously untagged links in his e-newsletter, which I expect to be very helpful. However, then I looked at the landing pages for his direct traffic, and I see that it is almost entirely filled with thousands of unique URLs that begin with a question mark followed by the name of his e-newsletter or shopping cart vendor. It would be the equivalent of having a url like the following: "www.willmarlow.com/?constantcontact=keya;sldkfjsdlfkjdf;sldkjf" If we have this amount of information in the link, shouldn't there be a way to add additional parameters to the URL to move this traffic out of the Direct column? Has anyone encountered this before? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | williammarlow0 -
Tips for migrating Google News traffic?
We are about to relaunch a site that gets a lot of Google News traffic. We are not changing domain, but the site structure is changing greatly, with the URLs of both news index pages and articles being shaken up. Obviously, we've 301-ed every page to its closest equivalent on the new site. We've also got a news sitemap. As we are not changing domain, is there anything further we need to do to help protect our Google News traffic. On a related note, does anyone have a relaible way of measuring traffic from Google News listings in universal search?
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610 -
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