Negative SEO Click Bot Lowering My CTR?

[TheDude]

I am questioning whether one of our competitors is using a click bot to do negative SEO on our CTR for our industry's main term.

Is there any way to detect this activity?

Background:

We've previously been hit by DoS attacks from this competitor, so I'm sure their ethics/morals wouldn't prevent them from doing negative SEO.

We sell an insurance product that is only offered through broker networks (insurance agents) not directly by the insurance carriers themselves.  However, our suspect competitor (another agency) and insurance carriers are the only ones who rank on the 1st page for our biggest term.  I don't think the carrier sites would do very well since they don't even sell the product directly (they have pages w/ info only)

Our site and one other agency site pops onto the bottom of page one periodically, only to be bumped back to page 2.  I fear they are using a click bot that continuously bounces us out of page 1...then we do well relatively to the other pages on page 2 and naturally earn our way back to page 1, only to be pushed back to page 2 by the negative click seo...is my theory.

Is there anything I can do to research whether my theory is right or if I'm just being paranoid?

[TheDude]

Thanks!  I figured as much, but I wanted to hear it from another guru rather than assuming on my own.

I appreciate it

[LSIversen]

Google do not use it in a page's ranking (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU). And since the referral spam is never actually on your site, but only activating your tracking code it shouldn't hurt you.

Besides, I don't think I've seen a site out there who hasn't been hit by referral spam. Some haven't been hit as hard, but still have seen it to some degree. Just set up some filters & segments so you can analyse on the real data. I found it very helpful to read this and this.

[TheDude]

Thanks!  I agree with everything you said.  We'll be sure to remove and disavow any negative links.

As you can see from the images I posted above, we are getting quite a bit of referral spam that we need to address.

Any idea if the referral spam can negatively impact Google measurement of user experience / dwell time?  I don't simply want to block it in analytics if it is poorly reflecting on our site.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

From an organic standpoint, I am really not sure - maybe someone can take a look for you there.

You could (and really should) check your referral spam (here's another resource) - from there you can remove and disavow possible links that are hurting your profile.

But again, from an organic standpoint, I am not entirely sure, and even then, I am not sure how you can prove it's malicious without hard proof.

I would focus on the links above and see what moves the needle for you. That's really the most you can do from my vantage point at the moment.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[TheDude]

Great links Patrick!

These are all things we're constantly working on.  The info on dwell time was of particular interest.   Thanks!

We might be wearing tin foil hats a bit, but the past actions of the competition have unfortunately led us down that path of thinking.

Is there any way for us to try to confirm whether click bots are being used to artificially boost the rankings of sites for a particular keyword?  I can't think of any way to detect that activity.

[TheDude]

Here are what sites it appears to be coming from.

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[TheDude]

Great tip Tim!  You were right on the money.  Thank you so much

We did find Russian bots with awful user experience hitting our site starting in April.  My webmaster is looking in how to handle this.  Any suggestions to get him started?

8Deil9D

[TheDude]

I don't believe they are clicking on my site and providing Google data that I have a bad user experience.

Instead, I think they may be providing an artificially good experience for their site and others that don't directly sell our product.  As a result, my user experience is lowered relative to the others.

Once again, it's just a theory based on their prior behavior and what is actually showing in the SERPS, but something I am concerned about.  If I'm right, I don't believe I'll be able to detect, nor do anything about it short of having my own click bot, which I won't do.

[TimHolmes]

I know this may not be the case, but have you checked your site analytics to see if it is being hit by a number of these Russian bot / crawler style entities that have been doing the rounds of late, if so this could be another of the reasons you are seeing additional bounced number growing.

I found I had a few and over the last few weeks I have made an effort to remove a lot of this negative referral traffic and crawlers.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi LSlversen

I like your thinking here - to me it sounds like what your users are searching and what they are getting aren't meeting expectations. I would look into that and make sure you are on the right path with what kind content / expectations you are setting.

Here's a bit of reference to what LSlversen is chatting about. Check it out. I would take a step back, ask some hard questions, and prioritize on how you want to attack issues. You'll be better off - I highly doubt there are click bots happening.

Hope this helps a bit more!

[TheDude]

I guess that's the problem...there are thousands of reasons of why the rankings are what they are and there is no way to determine if a click bot is being used.  Is there?

Even if one is being used, I suppose the only thing I could do, is use one myself to counteract it, which I don't like the sound of.

[LSIversen]

Without knowing all the details of the case, maybe it has something to do with searcher intent? Seeing as it's only websites who don't sell the product, maybe that's exactly what the searchers are looking for?

If people who search it are clicking and spending a long time on the top results that are full of info, then it might signal to Google that they found a good result and more of that kind (information pages) will come up higher.

Again, I don't know if this is the case, but it might be a possible explanation for it.

[TheDude]

Thanks for the reply Patrick

If we had 100% proof, we would have reported to Google and the FBI.  Unfortunately, like most DoS attacks, it could not be traced back to anyone.

We rank well for every other industry term.  The fact that sites that don't even directly sell the product make me question if something weird is going on here.  My dream scenario (as is theirs I'm sure) would be to be on the first page, as the lone website that actually sells my product directly.  The other sites don't rank well for any other keyword in our industry...just the biggest volume keyword.

I sent you a private message with our URL and the keyword.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Can you provide a URL for your company that we can take a look into? Also, do you have proof (whether current or previously as you stated) that this other company has been attacking your site? If so, you should be reporting that to Google. I wouldn't do this though unless you are ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE this company or SEO team is doing this, and you can PROVE it. If you can't, then don't.

If you could though, please provide your URL. As you said you could be being paranoid and it could be a number of things such as your:
On-site SEO
Content
Backlinks Industry & keyword difficulty
etc.

...that could be hurting your rankings. It'd be easier to gauge with a URL.

Hope this helps! Good luck!