UPDATE: We were able to get tracking code on the Pandora ads and determined that it was the source of nearly all of those visits. So, it WAS Pandora all along.

Hey! I haven't resolved the issue yet, but I'm working with the client to add some tracking to all of their Pandora ads. I'm thinking that might be the culprit. Turns out the are running several ad types so there are some that may not be tagged after all.

The implementation isn't the issue, because the only time we see this 11 issue is from this specific traffic source. Everything else behaves normally and typically aligns with metrics we get from other sources.

I will definitely keep you posted about updates. (And will probably throw a party when I finally get it resolved!)

The more I learn about this, the less I know.

It appears that each individual session is actually being counted as 11 sessions. Unless, of course, 11 people from the same small town visited the website on the same day, viewed the same pages and entered the exact same typo into the coupon code box.

Everything my mystery traffic does appears to happen in multiples of 11. I'd love to think that it's just the Internet reminding me that Spinal Tap is awesome, but I suspect there may be more to it.

Thank you so much for your response!

Yep. I've looked at it by screen resolution, device, location, ISP, demographics...just about everything. Every indication is that this is NOT bot traffic. The distribution percentages of the various attributes are all fairly similar to the "regular" traffic. The only exception is that my phantom traffic appears to be a little older. The traffic patterns also follow the regular traffic, and those patterns are usually influenced by offline advertising efforts.

This feels like some kind of rogue mobile ad campaign, but we have ruled out all mobile campaigns that we are knowingly running (Facebook, Instagram, Google Display on Pandora, etc.). We are also seeing bounce rates significantly higher than the rest of our mobile campaign traffic which would theoretically rule out the possibility that our tracking code is getting stripped out somehow on some of our campaigns. We have ruled out both promotional and transactional emails.

This is easily the most frustrating analytics mystery I've ever encountered!

I've got a client that gets a considerable amount of traffic that:

1. Enters on an interior page (that we are running properly tagged ads for on various platforms)
2. Bounces
3. Has a browser of either Android Webview or Safari (in-app) which I believe indicates the website is being viewed within a mobile app
4. Has no referrer data: (direct) / (none)

We've tested several scenarios (Facebook app, Gmail app, etc.) and ruled them out. Anyone know what this might be?

Thanks in advance!!

Ryan,

Thanks for your quick response!  The reason we aren't doing 301s or noindex on these sites is that they no longer exist.  We would have to essentially resurrect these dev sites for the sole purpose of redirecting.  Since Google's cached version is the new/current url wouldn't that imply that they are aware of the change and the subdomains are hanging around for another reason?

We typically noindex dev sites but a couple of them slipped by without.

Hey guys,

I've got kind of a strange situation going on and I can't seem to find it addressed anywhere.  I have a site that at one point had several development sites set up at subdomains.  Those sites have since launched on their own domains, but the subdomain sites are still showing up in the Google index.  However, if you look at the cached version of pages on these non-existent subdomains, it lists the NEW url, not the dev one in the little blurb that says "This is Google's cached version of www.correcturl.com."  Clearly Google recognizes that the content resides at the new location, so how come the old pages are still in the index?  Attempting to visit one of them gives a "Server Not Found" error, so they are definitely gone.

This is happening to a couple of sites, one that was launched over a year ago so it doesn't appear to be a "wait and see" solution.

Any suggestions would be a huge help.  Thanks!!

I'm guessing it may just be a new bot.  Looking at the old data, we did get some similar organic traffic from Mountain View in the past - it was just a visit or two a month as opposed to the recent spikes.

I've noticed something a little odd in my organic search traffic lately.  Looking at several websites that target the Minneapolis area, I'm seeing some organic searches come in (typically using head keywords - no geo-modifier) from Mountain View, CA.  There's no way we are truly ranking well on these terms in California, so it certainly feels like Google sniffing around.  I was worried that perhaps they were checking into penalizing us or something, but we've actually seen upticks in search traffic lately.  This traffic is not showing up in Google Analytics, just Adobe SiteCatalyst.  In the past, spikes from random locations were probably some sort of crawler, like the preview bot, but these are coming in as searches with (for now) keyword data.

Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Ryan,

Thanks for your quick response!  The reason we aren't doing 301s or noindex on these sites is that they no longer exist.  We would have to essentially resurrect these dev sites for the sole purpose of redirecting.  Since Google's cached version is the new/current url wouldn't that imply that they are aware of the change and the subdomains are hanging around for another reason?

We typically noindex dev sites but a couple of them slipped by without.