Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Organic Traffic from irrelevant keywords in GA?
-
Hi,
I am doing SEO for a website that deals in 4-wheeler tyres. While reviewing the organic traffic in Google Analytics, i noticed some keywords that are completely irrelevant to the theme of the website. Some are porn related terms while some are like google, yahoo, laptops, youtube etc. It seems someone is doing negative SEO for my website, as a result of which a decent number of searches are coming from these irrelevant terms. What should i do to block traffic from such terms as this may harm my website's performance in search engines.
Please suggest a solution as soon as possible.
-
I did a deep dive analysis of this organic traffic from irrelevant keywords again and came to a conclusion that it is coming from a particular Internet Service Provider(ISP) and that too from a particular location only. In-order to explore more in detail, i monitor real time data in Google Analytics for organic traffic in that particular location and i found the same (screenshot attached). As a preventive measure, i have implemented a filter in the GA profile by excluding searches from that Internet Service Provider in GA reports. But this does not seems to be a permanent solution to this issue.
Can anyone suggest a solution to fix this issue permanently?
-
I see - I believe the hostname can be overridden by using the setDomainName function in the GA snippet, so that may be what's going on. WHY someone would go through the trouble, I don't know.
I would suggest posting this issue in the Google Products forum on Google Analytics, where you may be able to get some attention from someone inside Google who may have seen this problem before and have suggestions on how to handle it.
I highly doubt this is hurting your search engine rankings in any way - none of the offending content is in place on your website. It is much more likely that this is the result of someone scraping/republishing your site content and grabbing your GA code with it.
-
Hi Mike,
I selected the "secondary variable" option in the organic search report and enter "Hostname" as the variable in Google Analytics account. However, it is displaying my website's URL only for all relevant as well as irrelevant keywords.
-
http://reverseinternet.com/analytics/5670334 is showing that GA code being used on 4 domains. 2 have apollo in the name and redirect to the main site. A random 4th one called deltapoint24.com doesn't appear to have the GA code on the homepage, and throws a 404 when you add /india/ to the url.
I would also check the hostname as Mike suggested.
-
If I'm not mistaken, I believe you can simply select the "secondary variable" option in the organic search report and enter "Hostname" as the variable - which will display the root of the relative page URL for each keyword, uncovering what domain that traffic is hitting. I've used this in the past for similar GA profile issues across root/sub domains. Might be worth a shot.
-
Hello PFX111,
I checked the source code of the page, as well as the text-only version, and source code of the cached page in Google/Bing/Yahoo serps. I did not see any questionable content. If they are hacking and cloaking they're doing a darn good job of it, but I don't think that's it. Like everyone else, my first reaction was to say you were hacked, but the site appears in the SERPs without any message from Google about it being harmful to your computer, and I see no evidence that this spammy content appears on the page even when Google views the site.
Here are my two thoughts at this point:
1. It could be referral spam.
2. Someone else could be using your Google Analytics account code (it looks like UA-######-#) on their site.
In both cases you would see the keywords in Google Analytics but not Google Webmaster Tools. You can set up a new profile in Google Analtics and set it to track the domain (instead of just the relative path), which could bring up other domains if they are using your Analytics code. See this page for details on how to do that:
-
Hi,
The domain name and the landing page is http://www.apollotyres.com/india/. I have attached few screenshots of the GA account highlighting the irrelevant keywords driving organic traffic to the website. Kindly have a look at it and suggest a solution to overcome this issue.
wtlA8yr,zYn8n55,c5emIW7#0 wtlA8yr,zYn8n55,c5emIW7#1 wtlA8yr,zYn8n55,c5emIW7#2
-
PFX111,
Please provide the domain if you could. This will make it much easier for us to help you.
I seriously doubt this is a result of someone doing "negative SEO" but could not say for sure unless I can look at it myself. One thing I'd like to know is the landing page URL where these terms are sending visitors on your site from the SERPs.
-
Hi Sorina,
Thanks for your response. I did check the keywords in Google Webmaster Tools under Optimization---->Content Keywords, but i could not find any such term, which was appearing in Google Analytics. Also, i did review 200 URLs and still could not find anything related to those keywords on my website. The browser message "this website may harm your computer" is also not showing up in search results. These searches are coming from a particular city only. What should i do now to overcome this issue?
-
Irving,
I personally saw this happen on a website - it was hacked, but no malware was placed on it. So the browser message "this website may harm your computer" was not showing up, and no massage was displayed in WMT under Malware.
These are some blackhat SEO hacks, where they alter the content of a website and place links to porn/gambling without the intention to get the website flagged for malware. The hackers just want to get good links to their shallow websites, not to knock these websites out of Google.
-
If it's showing as organic traffic then it's people clicking on those links not links on your site from hacking. You would also see your site disappear from the serps and/or get the message that says "this website may harm your computer". But check your source code just to make sure the site is clean and look in WMT under MALWARE to see if there is any malware on your site.
Look at your external links and see what is going on asap, this can knock your site out.
-
Are you sure it is negative SEO or is your site actually containing these keywords?
Your website may contain that keywords if you were hacked.Go to Google Webmaster Tools and check if there, under Optimization -> Content Keywords these strange keywords appear. If they do, check your website'c source code, someone may have injected strange text/links in your code.
As for Negative SEO use opensiteexplorer.org to find those bad links and use the Disavowal Tool to block them.
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
-
Organic Brand Clicks/Traffic Drop - Why?
Hi Moz Community, I've been reviewing Search Console and have been noticing that there has been a consistent drop in brand clicks. The overall number of keywords (especially for the top 2 pages) have been increasing, according to SEMRUSH, however, traffic and sales are still in decline. There are no algorithmic and manual penalties, in addition, paid search activity has been increasing in the leadup to Christmas. Has anyone experienced this and potentially advise how to diagnose and resolve this issue?
Branding | | rec1230 -
Negative Keywords for SEO
Hi Mozzers, I have a client that has a totally legit retail business and they are getting lots of traffic organically that is adult in nature and totally off subject. The reason for this is their domain name contains keywords which while work well for their brand, when reordered and couple with a another keyword (such as picture or image) they get traffic for searches that have nothing to do with them and are pretty awful in nature. If this was Adwords I'd add a negative in of course but how can I stop bad traffic coming to the site organically? Any ideas? Cheers B 🙂
Branding | | Bush_JSM0 -
Avoid Keyword in New Domain Name?
We are looking to rebrand our domain name. Our existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. We own www.metro-manhattan.com and were hoping to use this domain. The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. Is the fact that the new domain contains "Manhattan" a negative? I know that the fact that it has a hyphen is weak. Manhattan is part of such keywords as "Manhattan office space". Regarding the company name, is the fact that it contains the target phrase "Manhattan office space" bad? Our company name may sound like exact match anchor text and I am not sure what to do about this if anything. I would really prefer to keep our name but it is necessary to change it to improve SEO we will do so. Would it be better to change to a new name like "Integrity Real Estate" which does not contain target phrases or keywords ("real estate" is not a major target phrase as it is to generic) ? Or how something like www.mmos.com for the domain and leave the company name alone? How would I go about finding a company that would assist is in creating an SEO friendly domain name and perhaps a new corporate name if necessary? Thanks, Alan
Branding | | Kingalan10 -
Changing My Home Page Focus Keyword
Hello, We recently launched a new home page design on our company website, but we still have the same focus keyword in the title, H1, and in parts of the page copy. However, this focus keyword no longer represents our entire brand. We want to change the focus keyword and have done some research on the keyword difficulty and local searches in Google, but are still uncertain on the potential effects. Let me explain our situation more in depth. Instabill provides business owners with merchant accounts and other services. Our current focus keyword is offshore merchant accounts. However, over the past three months, we have been helping businesses establish US merchant accounts (retail, mobile, and online--but retail and mobile to US only while online to merchants everywhere) and intend to continue to increase our US merchant base. We are also still able to provide offshore merchant accounts. Our fear is that when a US merchant comes to our website (http://www.instabill.com), they will see Offshore Merchant Accounts in big H1 letters and leave our site since they want a local US merchant account. However, we still want to make sure our international merchants know we can still work with them. Thus said, we would like to change our focus keyword to something more broad, but still descriptive of our brand: merchant services. To elaborate, we want our H1 heading to read Merchant Services for Retail and Online Businesses. Merchant services is more descriptive since we provide more than just merchant accounts. We also provide the payment gateway, free shopping cart modules, help registering businesses, help obtaining an SSL certificate, and a discounted PCI Certification Service through McAfee. We have more than one page on our website that ranks for the term online merchant accounts, but none that rank for merchant services. However, we are willing to put in the work to ensure we optimize our website properly and put in the effort to make the change successful. Merchant services is also a keyword we would like to optimize on our website, so making the change on the home page will only help the steps in the process. Statistics:
Branding | | Instabill
Offshore Merchant Accounts has a 35% difficulty level and we consistently rank for SERPs #1 and #2. This term, according to the Google Keyword Tool, only receives 70 monthly searches in the US, 50 in the UK, 10 in Canada, and 10 in Australia. These are the four countries of most importance to our website. Merchant Services has a 57% difficulty level and we do not rank for it in Google at all since we have never tried to optimize for this term in the past. Also according to the Google Keyword Tool, this term receives 14,800 monthly searches in the US, 1,600 in the UK, 590 in Canada, and 260 in Australia. Clearly, merchant services could potentially get us much more traffic than offshore merchant accounts if transitioned correctly. I suppose my bottom line question is this: Would it be a bad idea to change my primary focus keyword on my home page? What type of results should I expect to see if searching Google for my company name? Thank you for all of your help. Meghan
Senior Copywriter of Instabill0 -
Drop In Branded Traffic
Hi, We took on a new client in March. Over the last few months I have noticed that their Branded Organic Traffic has dropped off considerably, around 20%. On further investigation I discovered that the drop off occurred between Jan & Feb this year (prior to us taking over). In Jan they launched a new site, the drop off seems to coincide with the launch of their new website. I also found out that their Page Rank had disappeared before the launch of the new website, and is still a PR/na. My first thought was that they have been penalised. How likely is this on a very well known site which gets roughly 170K visits per month? Could the drop in Branded Traffic be due to a decrease in advertising budget elsewhere (to compensate for the cost of the new website, leading to less brand exposure)? Could it be that there are just fewer people searching for their Brand? I guess the questions I am trying to find out are: 1. What are the reasons for massive drops in Branded organic traffic? 2. As an seo I am tasked mainly for optimising for non-branded organic traffic, is there anything I can suggest to the client to help get this traffic back? 3. If it is an algorithmic penalty (Panda, Penguin), how do I know which one? I have started with their links and disavowed known toxic links, fixed crawl errors, optimised their top pages etc etc. If it was a penalty and I mange to fix it, will their branded traffic return? Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated. Jon
Branding | | JonRaubenheimer0 -
Google auto-correct affecting one of my keywords
Hi there, I have a keyword "finao montreal" that used to rank 8 or 9 in Google serp. All of a sudden it dropped under the top 50 results, I was wondering why and I found out that Google now auto-corrects "finao montreal" to "final montreal". Finao is a well know brand of custom high-end photo albums and I find it strange that Google corrects it. Anyone has an idea on what to do with this situation? Is there a way to provide Google some feedback about the autocorrect?
Branding | | valadas0 -
How to increase traffic to forum?
Hi all. I help run the forum at www.bearsfansonline.com and really want to see if there any ways to increase traffic. We started with a core group of posters in 2009 and since then have only added one active user. I'm worried if we don't bring in some fresh faces, my core users will start to leave. That being said, does anyone have ideas how to go about doing this? We've tried holding contests but they haven't resulted in any new sign-ups. Don't really know what else we can do. I'd greatly appreciate any tips, suggestions, etc. Thanks in advance.
Branding | | Xee0
