Dealing with Dodgy Looking Traffic
-
Hi there I am really hoping someone can help.
The site I run has started receiving traffic from the US (we are a UK run firm who don't ship overseas). Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a massive problem but the traffic is coming directly to lots of pages and instantly bouncing. I am worried this is going to negatively impact my rankings as drop off rate and conversions are getting hammered by this 'fake traffic'.
The attached image shows the traffic for the homepage but its happening on every page with hundreds of hits bouncing and hurting my stats.
Is there any way of dealing with this or reporting it to an authority or even Google itself?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
George
-
Hey George,
As you say, Google shouldn't be inferring ranking adaptations from your data, for your site (within your Google Analytics profile). If they use any data in that kind of way, it would probably be from Search Console (which is actually Google's data, from their side)
If you can identify that it certainly is bot traffic, then it's unlikely that Google would move on it at all. They're very good at detecting fake traffic. Back in the day 'click-farms' used to be a thing, hundreds of people in third world countries (or a robot) clicking Google search results to try and increase CTR. If they've taken measures to filter that out (which they have) then 'dumb' bot traffic shouldn't impact you much
That being said, if all the bot traffic slows your site down a lot and then causes real users to react negatively to their browsing experience, that could be something which Google might pin you on
Your main thing to do is to really identify the traffic and what network domain it's coming from. If it looks obviously 'bot-like' then you can take measures to block requests from that area of the web. Be careful though, it might be a legitimate crawler, even Rodgerbot (the Moz crawler!)
See if you can pin the traffic to a network domain in GA, and then an IP-range in something like AWStats or server-log based analysis software. If you can say, yeah that IP range is probably that network domain and my vague idea of what it is, is X - then you'll be in a much better (more informed) place to proceed
-
Hi Effect Digital,
Wow, you are a star! Thank you so much for your help.
That article is great. I seem to have fallen into a trap a lot of us fall into in assuming that bounce rate is a kind of instant drop off statistic. Knowing that it is measuring the percentage of single engagement use hugely changes things! But that said the dwell time from this fake traffic is poor.
As the nature of the traffic is 'direct' rather than coming from google or any other engine does this then matter? Now as I know about the bounce rate vs pogo sticking debate I can't see that google will see this traffic as much of an issue? If Google isn't reading my analytics data I can't see how this now matters other than polluting the analytics data?
I was struggling to even find a name for it so having that helps a lot too!
Thanks,
George
-
First of all, most people believe that metrics from Google Analytics (including bounce rate) do not affect your ranking results or SEO intake. Here's a post on the subject: https://conversionxl.com/guides/bounce-rate/seo-impact/
There's no need to let anyone know, the only reason to tackle this is:
a) it's polluting your analytics data and ruining your insights
b) you're at constant risk of DDoS
If you don't care about either of those things then, it really doesn't matter at all
If you want to take better steps to identify this mystery traffic
- https://d.pr/i/hzBJTg.png (GA screenshot)
- https://d.pr/i/BmNK6n.png (GA screenshot)
- https://d.pr/i/Xryszu.png (GA screenshot)
I find these 3 steps in Analytics to be a pretty effective starting point
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 Increase US traffic for other GEO based website
Can you help me to understand why my traffic from the US is not increasing for landing pages/product pages whereas for our blog it has grown 2X to 3X past 2 quarters? I am afraid that I don't get any right answer for this. Could you or someone help me to discover the answer? Also, what should I do to rank in the US for a particular KW, we rank on 2 positions for KW "Hackathon" in India but for the US the no is 56. I don't understand what to do and the best possible way to rank in the US.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rajnish_HE0 -
What is the best way to eliminate ghost traffic from Google Analytics?
Hey Mozzers, I just wanted to see how you all deal with eliminating Google ghost traffic sources from Google. I tried setting up a RegEx 'include' list before, but it seemed as though I was blocking potential traffic sources when I did as much (I'm probably missing something here). Anyway, I'm interested to read how you all have dealt with this issue in the past, thanks for reading!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maxcarnage0 -
Which one is highest Traffic Generation forum ?
Hello guys, can any one please suggest me Good highest Traffic Generation forum For Business. as there are many but i need best sites Which could generate Good traffic,As i am new to Forum posting. any export can help please. Thank you in advance, Falguni
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | innovativeecomindia0 -
What penalty would cause this traffic drop (Google Analytic Screenshot)
This ecommerce site was hit (mostly) slowly by updates but there is nothing in GWT. Below is the graph. Keep in mind that most of our traffic is return customers, so the drops don't look dramatic, but they are. "New Visitors" doesn't show the drop. This is a "Daily" Google Analytics setting. The drop I've circled is May 23-May 24, 2013. It was a huge hit in non-return customers. This graph is "Unique Visitors" I don't know why the "New Visitors" graph is not showing the dip Although we had some big drops, a lot of the drop was gradual. Any help in identifying what could be causing the problem is appreciated. ga.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Loss of 85-90% of organic traffic within the last 2 weeks.
Hey Everybody, Have a client that recently came to us asking for SEO help. Did some initial analysis on their current SEO status and most everything looked pretty good. On-page work was pretty good, nothing really lacking there other then missing alt tags for all images. Their linking profile looked good too. Lots of good links from quality sources, all relevant. Client has done some good press releases. They could probably use a bit more focus in their content as it is somewhat general and not keyword focused. Initially it didn't look like they needed any help with their SEO, so was a bit curious as to why they contacted us. Today we get their google analytics information and immediately noticed that they have had a 85-90 percent drop in organic traffic from all major search engines that started about two weeks ago. If all their SEO looks to be done properly, any ideas what would account for the massive drop in traffic? The only thing that looks like may have happened is that they may have dropped a couple spots from position #1 to position 2-3 for some of their highest traffic terms. Even if that is the case, I would not expect such a high drop off in terms of organic traffic. Just curious as to what anyone else can attribute the huge drop in traffic to or what else may help identify the issue. It's almost as if analytics was turned off or removed from the site, but that is not the case.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Whebb0 -
Geo-targeted Organic Search Traffic to a sub-domain
For a client of ours, we are likely to create a sub-domain that is to be targeted at a specific country. Most of the content on this sub-domain will be from the main site, although with some specific differentiation to suit that geographic market. We intend to tell Google through Webmaster Centre that the sub-domain is targeted at a specific country. Some questions: a) Any idea how long it could take before google gives precedence to the content in this sub-domain for queries originating from that particular country? b) What is the likely impact of content duplication ? What extent of differentiation is necessary from a search engine perspective? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ontarget-media1 -
Is the SORBS-SPAM list a big deal?
Someone here pointed out that my server ip is on the SORBS-SPAM list and I was wondering if this was a big deal, and how it might have got there, and I would go about getting it off the list?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ayetti0 -
How do you deal with spammy backlinks?
One of the web designers I work with asked me to do a preliminary site assessment on a small business website. The owner of the business had a falling out with his previous web designer and moved over to the one I work with earlier this year. The site has been redesigned but when analyzing the back links I discovered that the previous designer had created directories to create backlinks to the page. The PR 0 links from the site number about 150 and are from unrelated topic pages. So, it made me wonder, how much damage can spammy backlinks do? What is the best practice to deal with spammy backlinks if you find them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheARKlady0