Please help! Is my blog traffic 'real' or 'bots'?

9 replies
Hey there Warriors!

First, I'd like to say I'm really happy to be a part of this lively community. I'm really hoping someone can help me with a concern I am having with my blog's traffic. I would appreciate any assistance anyone can offer. Thank you in advance!

I run a food blog which generates quite decent traffic through social media and search engines. The blog isn't huge or anything, but it does alright for itself (Alexa Rank 300,000+). A huge proportion of our traffic comes from social media shares (primarily Pinterest and Facebook) and search engine hits (about 300+ a day, not much but it's alright).

However, I recently decided to purchase some web traffic from a site with a fairly good reputation on the Internet. This site promised targeted geographical traffic by 100% real people, without a single use of bots. They generate traffic for clients through owning a big network of expired domains which populate with links for visitors to click through. Purchasing traffic through them means a link to your site is added to the list of sites on their expired domains. This is what they claimed. Also, they do not work on the basis of Pay-to-surf, pop-up ads, pay-to-click, etc. They merely list the site on their repository of expired domain names and have people choose to click on a given link out of their own free will. Sometimes they utilise XML feeds too.

So far their services have managed to deliver the traffic I paid for, without any issues. Communication on their end is also very good. However, I am having concerns with the ways this traffic is appearing on my Google Analytics. In particular, I have been noticing several weird referral addresses popping up as IP addresses.

At first I was concerned that this company was actually using automated bots, which is a big no-no in my eyes. However, a closer inspection of the data revealed several curious finds (See attached image)


(This image only showcases Referral traffic, not other forms of traffic. The IP addresses only appear in this category of traffic and not others)

I was hoping that someone here could please assist me in interpreting this data, and helping me determine if indeed this company is using bots instead of expired domain traffic as they promised. I don't want to jump to erroneous conclusions so I thought I'd ask the experts here first. Several concerns of mine include:

1) Why are the referral sites appearing as IP addresses instead of actual site names? Clicking on the individual IPs in Google Analytics reveals /redirect_ref.php and /redirect_js_new.php fields, which I found to be rather unusual.
2) Why is the bounce rate so oddly low with traffic coming from these sites? 4-8%? (I did not install my GA code twice by accident)
3) If bounce rate is low, why is the average page session only slightly more than 1? Doesn't such stats contradict each other? :O Shouldn't low bounce rate coincide with higher average page views?
4) Is the Average Page duration time indicative of bot activity or real humans? Usually, traffic from my social media sources averages about 1 minute in length, which is about the industrial average for food blogs (since people just scroll down to the recipes or save them immediately). So the average page duration from these IP addresses is on the lower side; however, they aren't as low as what bot activity is supposedly like (0.00).

I would so greatly appreciate any advice on what I should do and if such traffic could prove dangerous in terms of violating ad policies, etc. From my interpretation, the traffic does not since I am not paying anyone to click on ads nor forcing them to see the page through pop-under pop-up ads. But I'm a noob so I may be missing out on important stuff. Are they indeed using bot or real traffic?

Looking to hear from you! Thanks so much for your assistance!
#blog #bots #real #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author MrFume
    The traffic looks odd, right enough - you don;t mention any conversions or how you monetize the site, or sign ups to email optins e.t.c
    The IP's indicate the links are not being processed by DNS, so they are direct link referrals probably from unrelated private blog network traffic - old domains could be in any niche under the sun. It would not be targeted traffic, so I would not bother with it, you are better off investing in some Twitter/Facebook ads and directing your message to people who would be actually interested - traffic per se is useless unless it is targeted. That is my opinion, it is pointless traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author myfoodbloghaven
      Hey there MrFume,
      Thanks so much for taking the time to reply!
      In your opinion, does the traffic look like bot activity, or does it seem to be untargetted traffic from people who aren't that interested in my content?

      Should I use the money to get an SEO optimization service instead? Does Warrior Forum support any trusted SEO services I might be able to use to rank in keywords?

      Thanks so much again for your kind response,
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  • Profile picture of the author PrettyJenny
    Your traffic does look odd, even though there is not enough evidence to say that this is for sure bot traffic. In my opinion, your traffic service provider did send you real people and not bots. However these are not targeted traffic in your niche but from random sites and expired domains as the IP addresses are spoofed.

    To be honest I think you should take your investment elsewhere, such as Facebook ads and content marketing (guest posting and more SE optimized content on your blog).
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  • Profile picture of the author Martinsee
    This is exactly BOT or not real people.
    Have you bought traffic to your site ? if yes, that's the trick of the seller
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    • Profile picture of the author taxtorpedo
      You should be trying to capture the email addresses of visitors.

      This way you will have a meaningful way of measuring conversion
      rates.

      At the very least you should have a way for visitors to sign up for your
      RSS feed.

      Don't be so quick to write off this traffic. The KEY is how well it converts
      to your MOST WANTED RESPONSE (you have a clear cut idea of what
      your priority is, don't you?)

      Best of success.
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  • Hello myfoodbloghaven

    We 'a suspicious traffic, but we can not say with certainty whether bot, definitely not traffic in target.

    You could create a campaign with Facebook with a landing page, to measure the conversion rate.
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    • Profile picture of the author myfoodbloghaven
      Thanks everyone for your kind and very helpful responses! I appreciate the honest feedback.

      I find the stats very odd still, because it is logically not possible to have such a low bounce rate but an average page view of slightly more than 1. I've NEVER seen stats like these before.

      I am also a member of various ad networks agencies which pay CPM. In your opinions, do you think there is a risk I may be penalized for this traffic? If the traffic is very untargetted traffic (hence the low page duration), is this actually against the rules of most ad network agencies, given that the traffic is NOT pay-per-click, autosurf, pay-to-surf, etc, but is just untargetted, and may not be bot traffic (given that the bounce rate is not 100%)

      Hope somebody can please clarify this for me. Thanks so much in advance!
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      • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
        Originally Posted by myfoodbloghaven View Post

        Should I use the money to get an SEO optimization service instead? Does Warrior Forum support any trusted SEO services I might be able to use to rank in keywords?

        Thanks so much again for your kind response,
        Chances are you will not find a qualified SEO service here... The people you would want to use for SEO, are likely the people you can't justify paying with your current revenue. Just keep blogging and marketing your blog, you will generate more traffic than most SEOs here can provide.

        Originally Posted by myfoodbloghaven View Post

        Thanks everyone for your kind and very helpful responses! I appreciate the honest feedback.

        I find the stats very odd still, because it is logically not possible to have such a low bounce rate but an average page view of slightly more than 1. I've NEVER seen stats like these before.

        I am also a member of various ad networks agencies which pay CPM. In your opinions, do you think there is a risk I may be penalized for this traffic? If the traffic is very untargetted traffic (hence the low page duration), is this actually against the rules of most ad network agencies, given that the traffic is NOT pay-per-click, autosurf, pay-to-surf, etc, but is just untargetted, and may not be bot traffic (given that the bounce rate is not 100%)

        Hope somebody can please clarify this for me. Thanks so much in advance!
        It's bot traffic usually originating from Russia in my experience. The reason you have a low bounce rate is because they think if they add in an additional click you won't block the bot from accessing your site since you're it's not ruining your analytics. They forgot the time on site though, eventually they'll get a bit more clever and factor that in.

        How many spam comments do you get each day? That's what they're going for.

        In some cases it would be referral spam, where it leaves a specific url for you to go to and it redirects using their affiliate code to a site like amazon or something else.

        Can you get banned? I don't know. I would think that if you have enough traffic, whether it's referral, direct or organic, you will likely be okay.

        MY suggestion... block those IPs through your .htaccess file.

        Add this line to htaccess:

        Order Deny,Allow
        Deny from 127.0.0.0 (substitute with the IP's in the referral section and repeat)
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