Has our site been attacked?
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Hello fellow mozers! I am having a problem you might be able to help me with and any thoughts on the issue will be greatly appreciated.
Yesterday, I received an automated monthly report from Quill Engage, a tool that fetches data from Google Analytics and generates reports in a narrative format. Last month's 'referral traffic' section indicates two incredibly spammy websites driving more than 200 sessions to our website.
Naturally, I checked out GWT and Open Site Explorer but couldn't find any traces of such activity. Futhermore, all our metrics seem ok. Can this possibly be a negative SEO attack that was only traced by the aforementioned tool? Can you propose any other way to test this and make sure we're not being attacked?
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Hey there,
Do you see any of these referrals on your reports 4webmasters, free-social-buttons, trafficmonetize... (there are many) If you do then you don't have to worry about security issues or anything apart from your data quality.
You are not being attacked, at least personally, this type of spam is called ghost since it doesn't have any interaction with your site whatsoever and strikes many GA users.
As I mention the only thing you should worry about (big thing though) is your data. Here is a related question on MOZ that will help you get rid of it, I strongly recommend you to follow the valid hostname solution.
Hope it helps,
Carlos
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Thanks, will check it out!
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Maybe this article helps?
Sander
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