Dark Traffic Mystery!
-
Hey everyone,
My team and I have been digging into this problem and can't find an answer - and it turns out this has been an issue for over year. I'll try to explain the best I can, but let me know if you have any questions.
My predecessor noticed a non-existent page URL getting traffic in GA. He had the web dev team create a page so he could see where the traffic is coming from. The page has every directive under the sun on it; noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir, noimageindex, notranslate
All of the traffic is (direct) / (none). It gets about 300 visits per day. Avg. time on page is 15:40, bounce rate is 99.6% and it doesn't show up in the funnel. Previous page path is 92% entrance; 8% homepage. Geo is 92% US; then diversified across countries. Browser is predominately Chrome. OS is only Windows, and device is only desktop.
I've run this page through a backlink checker, and we get nothing. I've run it through Screaming Frog and it has no internal links pointing to it. I've tried putting quotes around the URL and googling it and we get a few websites, but they're very low authority and it isn't likely that they're sending 300+ visits per day. Also, since all of the traffic is direct, I don't think it's coming from a backlink anyway.
This has become a personal quest for several of us, as we really want to figure out where that traffic is coming from. Any thoughts? What am I missing? It's kind of driving me crazy because I can't figure out what I've missed, so if anyone figures this out and is coming to Pubcon in November, I'll buy you a beer!!
-
Yes is simple, the traffic is not generated in normal way, have you ever see those annoying Chrome plugins, that insert ads in your browser? ok but that is just an example. I work with an ads network "exoclick" who use this url http://exosrv.com/ to send me traffic most of that traffic is generated by normal ads but in my analytics accounts shows me that url as the source of traffic
I guest they use that url to track the real source of that traffic and then send it as one main traffic source and of course charge me
Another good example is mackeeper
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
-
How to stop Spam Referral Traffic?
We get referral traffic from Spammers to our Wordpress sites. That traffic comes from different countries: Russia, Ukraine, India, Germany, Pakistan etc. What's the best way to get rid of it? Setting up filters in Google Analytics? Is there something else that I need to do? Is there a plug-in that could help? Does that traffic have a negative impact on my SEO? Does it affect the rankings?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO2 -
Bing Referral Traffic
We do not get referral traffic from Google, only organic. Why do we get both organic and referral traffic from Bing?
Reporting & Analytics | | Mike.Bean0 -
Direct traffic spam on Google Analytics: how can you identify and filter it?
One of my smaller clients noticed a huge jump in direct traffic visits last month. The bounce rate was around 97% so I'm pretty certain that most of the traffic was illegitimate. I know how to filter out spam referrals and organic keywords in Google Analytics. However I'm not sure what to do about direct traffic spam. Are there recommendations for filtering this out? Can I identify spam IP addresses?
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
In Analytic Ipad Traffic Showing in Desktop, tablet and Mobile all 3 is it possible?
Hi, In Google Analytic when i see Mobile Overview in secondary dimension when i select Mobile device Model and when i search Ipad then i can see ipad in tablet, desktop and mobile why is it so? Ipad traffic and transaction should appear only on mobile whey it is showing on desktop and tablet? John..
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
New e-commerce launched, drop in traffic
One of our clients launched a new e-commerce site and there was a significant (60%) drop in traffic in Google Analytics following the launch. We are about 10 days into the new site, and our suspicion is that the move has caused a decrease in their site authority which has lowered their search position. The old site had the store at sitename.com/store. The new site has a Shopify store at shop.sitename.com. There were very few external followed links to the store pages, so we thought that there would be little effect for overall site traffic by moving the store to a subdomain. Any recommendations for next steps on diagnosing the problem and working towards a solution?
Reporting & Analytics | | DesignHammer0 -
Organic Traffic Spike
I've been chipping away at the SEO for a client's site for about 6 weeks and a few days ago noticed a huge spike in organic traffic for about a dozen keywords. See attached. Previously traffic was around 20-30 unique new visitors a day. On the 17 it went up to 500+ for 1 day, now it's come back down again. This spike was not for 1 keyword but for about a dozen. I've never seen this before and wondered if anyone had experienced similar. The site is about 3 months old. ebix3rl
Reporting & Analytics | | deployseo0 -
Does this traffic drop look like Penguin to you?
Dear Community In early October, I noticed a sharp drop of the rankings of the main KW of a website I manage: idee-sol.fr. This, of course I immediatelly attributed to penguin 2.1. While researching on the experience other webmasters have had with this unfortunate situation, I noticed that most of them had very sharp drops of traffic in a relatively small time, e.g.: a drop of 80% in a couple of days. But on idee-sol, the drop looks less steep yet equally worrying. Was the cause of this traffic/ranking drop due to penguin 2.1 exclusively or to penguin + something else (or not penguin at all?) I'm including an image of the "non paid search" report of analytics. dPnphnr
Reporting & Analytics | | Masoko-T0 -
Traffic Drop with no real explaination?
Hello Everyone, On one of my sites PokerOnaMac we experienced a 75% drop in traffic in about a week (since September 3rd). I took a look at GA and the penalties have been applied sitewide. I also checked my Google Webmaster Tools, and there are no messages regarding "unhealthy link structures." We have had other sites penalized by Penguin & Manual Removals, but they are recovering now. What is my best bet to find what is wrong? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | BestOdds0