Analytics oddity
-
This one has me a bit puzzled... I was just conducting a bit of routine analysis on a client's site, when I noticed avg. traffic doubled on one particular day. Now, this was easy to spot, since avg daily traffic for this site is 100 per day. The site also has approximately 100 pages of content. Here is the odd part... the spike was clearly attributed to Direct traffic and from a specific network in Palo Alto. The Bounce Rate was 100% and it appears that every page on the site was visited - very briefly.
Any clues as to what may have triggered this? A competitor maybe? An unkown bot?
I am looking forward to your thoughts.
-
I really would like to know the answer, because it happens in some of my sites too.
-
I agree. Don't think it's a bot. Can't believe I was so focused upon GA, I forgot about the raw server data! Unfortunately, the host just updated and IP info. I wanted to look at is no longer present.
-
I did just that, and you are right on the money. Upon drilling down, everything was the same. Strange thing is... I can't see one person accessing 100+ pages.
For the isolated "abnormal" visits in question - Bounce Rate was 100% - Avg. Visit - Duration was 00:00:00 - classified as Direct Traffic
-
I don't think so... why? From a non-technical perspective: I have not seen this sort of activity appear on other client accounts. For example, one domain I monitor has well over 1,000 pages indexed. If a bot crawled and GA included the crawl, the traffic spike would have been easily spotted.
-
I doubt it is an automated bot, as it would not fire GA traffic. Best way to determine what happened is to look at your server log for that specific day and analyse the raw traffic data.
Depending on the nature of the website, it could very well be a hack-attack or competitors looking at your site. You will be able to get some information from GA (i.e. OS and browser versions), but to really determine what happened, the server logs are your best bet.
-
I would be that if you drill down to the browser version, flash version, etc. that it'd also be identical. I've seen this once or twice, and for me, it turned out that it was one computer and either GA was messed up, or the browser was set oddly -- it was really one person visiting many pages on the site, but for whatever reason it showed in GA as multiple visits each going to one page. I can't say for sure that's what is happening for you, but that's what it was in my case (I happened to have a second analytics package and was able to see that it was truly the same user).
-
It sounds like a bot to me. Whose bot? Hmm...could be any bot that accessed your sitemap.
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
-
"Display" referrals on google analytics
We have just had 200+ visits on the 'Display' channel within 5 minutes - these referrals are from all over the world and this is very out the ordinary for our business - should we be concerned? 9cHllwW
Reporting & Analytics | | RayflexGroup0 -
Google Analytics Stopped Tracking Visits - NEED HELP!
Hi Moz Community, I have about 10 sites, static HTML sites and WordPress sites, which ALL stopped tracking Google Analytics on August 2nd. They go to a flat-line! Dead! No data! Has anyone else experienced this either currently or before? I have confirmed all code is correct as it's been tracking these sites for years. One site gets 5,000+ visits a month and they are sitting at only 1,500 now and will be a fun conversation to have with the client. If all code is correct, what should I do? How do I overcome this without having to re-create another account/tracking ID? Never dealt with something like this before and there is not much on the web or in other forums. Would appreciate any help or advice or tips! - Patrick
Reporting & Analytics | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Dip in traffic from Pune for our sites in Google Analytics
Hi, We have noticed dip in traffic from Pune after 6th May'14 in our Google Analytics account for few of our sites. Did anyone noticed the same for your site. Kindly let me know if you have any idea. Thank and Regards
Reporting & Analytics | | vivekrathore0 -
Analytics confusion
Hi all I am trying to see how many people visit the 'report a repair' pages of our website. It is on a separate domain to our main site. I have looked in our Google account for stats on it and now got confused. In our Google Analytics account, there is a property set up that says it is for spectrum-online (the domain I am after). However, it isn't collecting any data. It's admin info is: Tracking ID UA-7828548-8
Reporting & Analytics | | Houses
Property name
https://www.spectrum-online.co.uk There is another one there set up under the name 'Western Challenge' that does have data and mentions it is for spectrum-online: When I go into the Western Challenge property, the info is: Tracking ID
UA-7828548-3
Property name
http://www.westernchallenge.co.uk Western Challenge shouldn't exist now though. It was one of our old brand names and the site should be 301'd to the main www.spectrumhousing.co.uk site. I looked in this property at the top pages where people appeared to be landing. There are 9 of them, all with stats against them.Usually you can click the icon next to the URL and be taken to the live page. I however get taken to the Spectrum home page each time. All very odd. UA-7828548-3 is not the GA code used on our main site. I then tried clicking on a live spectrum-online page http://www.spectrum-online.co.uk/keyfax32/main.asp?co=KFRDROL_WCHA to see which Google UA number tracking code is being used but I can't see any GA code and it is a frame. Queries are:
Why is the Western Challenge property collecting any info?
Why is the spectrum-online property not collecting any info?
Is there any Analytics code on the Spectrum-online site and if so where? Apologies if I'm missing something obvious but your help would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
Is Google analytics not working properly anymore?
Hi mozzers, We launched a website 2 months ago and when monitoring Organic data on GA we had an average of 23% bounce rate like a month ago but the last 2 weeks I noticed that bounce rate=0%. This is very weird especially that we haven't modified the existing pages and that multiple keywords show an average site duration of 0 seconds. Any thoughts about this discrepancy? Do you think that there is an issue with the GATC implemented? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Google Analytics data - Canonical problems?
Hi everyone, We're trying to determine why Google Analytics is showing multiple versions of the same page as having "landing page traffic". For instance, these 2 pages are both shown as landing pages in GA: www.oursite.com/product_page
Reporting & Analytics | | darkgreenguy
www.oursite.com/product_page/ This occurs many times in Google analytics. Also, there are instances such as these: www.oursite.com/index.php/custom_product_url www.oursite.com/custom_product_url I can't find anything in Google Webmaster tools that would indicate a problem. However, this GA data is making me think there are duplicate content issues on the site... Thanks in advance for any help...0 -
How to remove unwanted dynamic parameters from a URL in Google Analytics
Hi, Would really appreciate some help with this. I have been experimenting with RegEx to achieve this but as I’ve never used it before am currently failing miserably. We have conversion pages i need to set goals for that are formatted as below: https://www.domain.co.uk//Application_Form/(S(ewhbqp5cki0mppuzukunkqno))/enterCardDetails.aspx I need to remove the (s(xxx)) section from the URL as rather than one pages i currently have thousands of unique URL's. What’s catching me out is that as it’s not a URL parameter I can’t discount and as half way through can’t just do head matches etc to /entercarddetails Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sarbs0 -
Google analytics for your mobile sub-domain
Hi All, I have just started mobile sub-domain for my desktop site. But I don't to know how to configure analytics for mobile sub-domain. I want to track result between desktop and mobile site. Can any one help me to sort out this problem? Waiting for reply
Reporting & Analytics | | Hexpress0