Just had a HUGE web site traffic day...don't know why!

[seoFool]

Hey everyone,

I just had a HUGE web site traffic day at my site: seoFool.com

The problem is, I don't know why and it's bothering the crap out of me. First of all, my traffic is up 313% versus previous Thursday, and most days in general.

Second, my Google Analytics says that most of the traffic is Direct Traffic, and 90% NEW traffic.

So I've got no Referring sites to analyze or anything. And my bounce rates are lower than normal too.

I didn't do any special advertising, heck I didn't do anything special at all.

It's just really weird. I just keep staring at my analytics account trying to figure out where this traffic is coming from and why...so I can duplicate it!

I've had random traffic spikes before but none this big or sudden.

Does anyone have any ideas? I guess I should just shut up and be happy, but I've gotta know whats going on!

[David Wolfman]

Those things happen sometimes when your site gets out of Google "sandbox" and is regarded as trusted from now on.

You'll see huge bump in traffic and find out to be way higher in the listings than you would expect.

If that continues then you're OK, but if your traffic falls down again after a while that means internal shifting of positions in Google rankings. They fluctuate site positions on lower pages to give others a chance, or something like this. Same as they do with PPC ads.

[gravtex]

Do you have a Google Alert on your domain name?

I've had cases where I've seen bumps in traffic, but it came from being written in a newspaper or online publication without an active link, just a URL so people have to type it in.

If you've done any videos or podcasts to promote your site, those visitors almost always type in the domain as well.

It's hard to say when it shows up as direct traffic, but frequently you can make an educated guess as to where it came from.

Gary

[seoFool]

David....Don't think it's a sandbox thing since none of the traffic is being referred from Google.

Gary...yep, got alerts set up for the domain and site:www.seoFool.com and major keywords etc...no real change alert-wise...google pretty constantly crawls my site within a couple of hours of posting new stuff. Though I have posted 7 or 8 videos on youtube recently and I always embed urls in my descriptions at youtube...but still, if the traffic was coming from there, wouldn't that show up as referring traffic in google analytics?

Traffic has been somewhat less today, but it's still slightly above average.

Oh well, I guess the mystery will remain! Thanks for your suggestions!

[RMC]

Check the location maps of the traffic sources in analytics.

I've seen on several accounts freak one or two days where some single location out of california I think just sends a ton of traffic, but it's not real traffic. Some kind of robot or glitch.

[freudianslip27]

Boy that is a mystery. I work with offline businesses so they get a good deal of typein traffic, but I don't know why people would be typing yours in without you doing promotion.

Maybe traffic is coming in from somewhere, and google is mislabeling it as direct traffic? Or traffic is coming through some sort of meta refresh where the history is being lost?

Matt

[hermanjr]

Since I may not be as season as you are in marketing what are some of the ways that you do use to bring in traffic, Just some suggestions.
Thanks

[SurviveUnemployment]

If the referring site opens the link in a new window, you won't see the referrer. It could be that some busy site linked to you like that. Or maybe you wrote an article that got picked up on a lot of splogs that direct all outgoing links that way. Or maybe a lot of people saw one of your YouTube videos and manually typed in the url (this would be my guess if you put the url in your video). Check your YouTube views.

Let us know if you figure it out.

[sweetfranky]

This happened to me a few months back. They were all direct hits that came out of a small city in California. I still have no idea what it was, perhaps some robot scanning my site? Please let us know where it came out of.

[Tony Dean]

I have had spikes like that over several days and found that the traffic is coming from mainland China!

[SurviveUnemployment]

Originally Posted by Tony Dean

I have had spikes like that over several days and found that the traffic is coming from mainland China!

Yeah, one of my sites is very popular on the Asian search engine Baidu. It gets BIG traffic from there. (2/3 of the people in the world live in Asia.) I think in China they might block referrer information because of the "great firewall." That might explain it.

[McManigal]

Originally Posted by David Wolfman

Those things happen sometimes when your site gets out of Google "sandbox" and is regarded as trusted from now on.

You'll see huge bump in traffic and find out to be way higher in the listings than you would expect.

If that continues then you're OK, but if your traffic falls down again after a while that means internal shifting of positions in Google rankings. They fluctuate site positions on lower pages to give others a chance, or something like this. Same as they do with PPC ads.

I've noticed that new domains are hard to get ranked. Do you know how long this "sand box" period lasts?

[SurviveUnemployment]

You could be in the sandbox for 6-8 months. To get out, you have to add content and links regularly.

[rosetrees]

I had a freaky day a few days ago - when 1 person/bot (I now think it was a person) spent 2 hours on an old site of mine repeatedly going to one page where I sell products and then going to pages with free downloads.

36 hours later I received an email, claiming to come from 2 sisters in Uganda. Actually it took her (or them) 2 goes to get it right. The email asked me if I could tell them how much 3 of the products would cost and how they could pay. An obvious, and very amateurish attempt at a scam since it would make no sense at all to buy the three products they enquired after for the purpose they claimed.

I replied that all they had to do was scroll down the page and click on the appropriate Paypal buttons. I never heard from them again!

[majidmaskat]

that is rather weird, but you should be grate full i think

[Gary Killops]

I have a local wine site that has a consistant traffic flow. I did notice over the past week that one of the static sub pages is getting a lot of hits, often being the most popular page of the day on the site.

The main page is a PR4 and the sub page recently went from PR0 to PR2. I believe that is the reason for the increased hits to that page.

Gary

[seoFool]

@Ross....yeah, I had thought of that....and a goodly sized chunk came from Brazil, but it was spread out all over Brazil, like 6 or 7 different cities...so no joy there.Even without the Brazil traffic though, it would still have been an enormously spiked traffic day.


@freudianslip27 funny you should say that...that was my very first thought. I even remarked to someone in the office that it looked like the Google Analytics had gone wonky *L* I hadn't thought of the meta refresh thing you suggested...that's definitely something to think about. But there's no one source, I can drill down and check network locations of the site visitors, and aside from the Brazilian traffic I mentioned above, there is no one dominant network sending the traffic.

[actionplanbiz]

Maybe you got drunk told some stranger and he told the world?:

[nettech]

I've had this in the past, most of it originates from the Phillipines and I don't knwo why. My assumptions is that this is some kind of spam/dos attack. NOt really too sure how to ban this.

[scfc16]

It happened for me on a finance site , that got to no 1 in 3 months of hitting the web. The traffic seems to come from India !! Although I don't promote the site in India , most of the traffic is direct !!!

[BlueSquares]

Google Analytics can tell you exactly where that traffic is coming from...and what page is receiving it. Drill in on today's details and look under "Content" > "Top Landing Pages". This will tell you what page is getting the surprise influx of traffic. Then click on "Entrance Sources" to see where the traffic is originating.

[seoFool]

Originally Posted by BlueSquares

Google Analytics can tell you exactly where that traffic is coming from...and what page is receiving it. Drill in on today's details and look under "Content" > "Top Landing Pages". This will tell you what page is getting the surprise influx of traffic. Then click on "Entrance Sources" to see where the traffic is originating.

The problem and the mystery is that most of it is Direct Traffic, so the "Entrance Sources" thing doesn't tell me anything. Google analytics just tells me it's direct traffic. *shrugs*