Recent large spike in traffic from same location?

[devonkrusich]

Since May 21st our site is showing via Google Analytics a large spike in traffic to our home page.  The traffic increase is 4-5 times our average.  I was able to track the source to the same town we are headquartered.  We have lost 4 spots for our top keyword.  We went from 7 to 11 in Google in this time period.  I understand it could be related to Penguin.  But I also suspect this issue is negatively effecting ranking by increasing bounce rate and decreasing pages per visit and time on site.

Before/After May 21st

Returning Visitors: 52% / 23%

New Visitors:  48% / 77%

Pages per Visit: 12.4 / 5.44

Duration of visit Avg: 10.23 / 4.22

I would greatly appreciate any ideas on the cause of this issue.  Also any input on the above metrics and sudden lost in a couple spots in SERP.

Thanks.

[KeriMorgret]

Google has says that they do not use GA for rankings or for search quality. Here's a video from Matt Cutts at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU.

[devonkrusich]

We did find that the IP's hitting the home page for a second were coming from our IP block.  I am going to set up a filter in GA.  My concern becomes Google's use of user metrics like dwell time.  If I block on GA will that still hurt my user metrics in the eyes of search engine rankings.  Is Google looking at my GA with filters or are they looking at raw data which would still include the false visits from our server?

[Netlogiq]

As I understood, all the visits are direct to his home page. From the data he wrote it seems that a person is deleting all his history every time before visiting the website.

Before/After May 21st

Returning Visitors: 52% / 23%  / New Visitors:  48% / 77% (more new visitors - or more of the same visitor deleting his cookies))

Pages per Visit: 12.4 / 5.44 (an increase of single page visits would lead to a sitewide  decrease in pages per visit) Duration of visit Avg: 10.23 / 4.22 (decreasing the average visit duration with 6.01 minutes could mean the visits are extremely  fast). Maybe I am wrong, but it could be an automated tool - what do you think @Keri Morgret?

@Devon - you should check also if GA is installed properly. The Asynchronous code must be before the ending tag of the head section - so before and before any other javascript. So just make sure your GA tracking code is the last code in the head section of your website.

[KeriMorgret]

Are they all one page per visit? Are they all visiting a different page each time?

It's been several years, but I had something like this happen to me. Had 50+ visits all coming from the same city, all direct traffic, all with a single page per visit. I happened to have another analytics package on the site at the time, and saw that it was the same IP and actually one user visiting 50+ pages. For some reason, GA though they were different people.

If you look at some of the technology reports in GA, you might look to see if they have the exact same browser resolution, flash version, etc. That may help indicate if it's actually one computer that has some settings that are making GA think it is separate visits.

[Netlogiq]

You can block the IP once you identify it - both from visiting your website and from Analytics tracking if you want, but I wouldn't worry too much. Besides inflating your data in GA, it can't have a negative impact on your website. If the problem continues just analyze your  visitors experience at traffic level - organic, referrals and social.  Did you exclude your own Ip from Ga tracking?

[devonkrusich]

It is a well known network in our area. Cox communications.

[Netlogiq]

Is the Network branded - for example from a company? Check the name of the network and if it's not a well known internet provider and it's a name from a company instead it means someone from that company keeps visiting your website (either manually or using a tool) - and you can get in touch with them - see if it's a competitor, etc

[devonkrusich]

Thanks for the response.

It is Direct traffic coming from the same network.  It also looks like it is using Chrome as the browser.

[Netlogiq]

Did you also check to see if the visits come from the same network? Are all of those visits direct, organic or referral?  since you said they were all to your home page. Only user behavior from organic traffic can affect your rankings and since you lost only 4 spots, it's not the Penguin update. In case the traffic is organic, check the keyword report to see which keywords started to bring you more traffic - maybe you actually rank better for those.