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Sudden increase in visitors. Good / Spammed?

by Bryan Douglas
14 replies
I have an article directory that has been growing steady for the past month or so. Roughly around 500 uniques per day and 2.04 page views per person. Avg time on the site was around 2 min.

62% of the traffic was comming from the Search Engines.

20 % was direct.

I just noticed a sudden spike in traffic and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or if I just got put on a spam list.

Stats from yesterday - 5/29/11

1224 uniques
3404 page views
2.78 time on site
17.96% bounce rate

This is great, but the one difference I noticed is that :

83.42% of the traffic is direct traffic and

13.24% is referred from the Search Engines.

Also, the top landing page is

http://www.article-smart.com/login.php - 936 entrances

This is a pretty big swing. Any ideas? I tried checking it out in analytics, webmaster tools, etc but it's direct ( meaning they type the site in the tool bar )

I also did notice on aweber that some of the links in the follow up emails are being clicked multiple times ( like 10 times )

This is what is making me think that I got added to an article directory software or something.

Also, if I did, I'm not really sure if that's a bad thing or good thing.

My aweber subscriptions jumped from 20 a day to over 100 yesterday. Wonder if they are garbage emails.

Thoughts?

PS. The only marketing I have recently done is started to optimize the site and submitted to 200 directories, 50 social bookmarking sites, and submitted the RSS Feed to 75 RSS feed websites.
#good #increase #spammed #sudden #visitors
  • Profile picture of the author J R Salem
    Hmm, thats quite a jump, and makes me skeptical.

    Did you add backlinks recently to your directory? Get any type of Press Release written?

    I'd look at it over the next 5-7 days and try and get a feel for whats happening. Hard to tell right away in these situations, but its hard to imagine a true spike like that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bryan Douglas
    Oh yea, I did submit to 200 directories and 50 social bookmarking sites. Also, submitted the site's RSS to 75 sites. If that causes a jump like that, that would be good stuff.

    I would think if it was from the directory submissions tho, that they would be in analytics as a "referring site" rather than a direct.

    I just bumped my aweber to send an email immediately after the sign up one to see if it gets opened and any clicks. I'm curious to see if these are valid email accts.
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  • Profile picture of the author properyDice
    It is good for you and for your website.and i s a gradual change.
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    • Profile picture of the author theseoguru
      Hello
      there is no need to worry, Cz this is good for your site.
      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author PatriciaJ
        A sudden increase in visitors is brilliant when they are to your post pages but not to your sign up or login page.

        It looks like you've been added to some sort of software to me. I've been getting a lot of obvious software signups to my directories, they get a link in their profile and that's why they do it.

        As you are using the Article Friendly script you can delete them all with one click. I purge non participants at least once a week, if I didn't I would have far more authors than articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bryan Douglas
    @propery, I am thinking it might be a little more than gradual and from where the traffic is comming from, it's not natural.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bryan Douglas
    Ok, so I just added a "follow-up" email to aweber to go out instantly when someone signs up with a tracked affiliate link. I am going to track the opens/clicks to try and see if they are real emails or not.

    Had one open so far and it clicked the link 24 times.

    Not looking too promising....

    We'll see in 24 hours.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bryan Douglas
    @ Patricia , that would make sense. I'll take a peek and see if they are not contributing and just setting up an acct to post a link on their profile page. I didn't think of that one. Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author DIMSKK
    Well it depends on the traffic sources. Are they coming from a specific website? Someone might be scrapping your website's data and this has resulted in a traffic increase.
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    • Profile picture of the author PatriciaJ
      Originally Posted by Bryan Douglas View Post

      @ Patricia , that would make sense. I'll take a peek and see if they are not contributing and just setting up an acct to post a link on their profile page. I didn't think of that one. Thanks!
      That was the only reason I could think of hundreds of signups in a day and most of them not submitting.

      Originally Posted by DIMSKK View Post

      Well it depends on the traffic sources. Are they coming from a specific website? Someone might be scrapping your website's data and this has resulted in a traffic increase.
      That happens too but it would be to post pages and not a login page unless it got stuck on one page.
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  • Profile picture of the author LeeRoper
    Check the map under Visitors in your analytics. If you're seeing more of the same range of visitors you've had in the past, that's great. If you've got a sudden influx from one place, and especially if it's different from your usual visitor profile, then you've got something odd going on.
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    • Profile picture of the author shmeeko69
      I don't want to sound too negative towards the new traffic you've received, but it's quite a jump and I would suspect that someone's blasted your website to a large email list or something along those lines!

      Mark :confused:
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      The Rock n Roll of Marketing Reviews
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  • Profile picture of the author Giftys
    I agree. Never get too excited about the spikes. They usually go right back down. Only when it's been in one place for a couple of weeks is it time to throw a party. We've had spikes like that in the same manner. They can be difficult, if not impossible, to figure out. They usually always go back down.
    Signature

    WWJD

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    • Profile picture of the author Bryan Douglas
      Originally Posted by LeeRoper View Post

      Check the map under Visitors in your analytics. If you're seeing more of the same range of visitors you've had in the past, that's great. If you've got a sudden influx from one place, and especially if it's different from your usual visitor profile, then you've got something odd going on.
      I just checked and 952 are from the US , 237 from the UK, 140 from India and the rest of the countries are 14o views and under.

      A day last week:

      Last week I had 171 from the US, 128 from India, and 39 from the UK.

      So it looks like the jump is mainly in the US.

      Originally Posted by shmeeko69 View Post

      I don't want to sound too negative towards the new traffic you've received, but it's quite a jump and I would suspect that someone's blasted your website to a large email list or something along those lines!


      Mark :confused:

      Yes, I think you maybe right.

      Originally Posted by Giftys View Post

      I agree. Never get too excited about the spikes. They usually go right back down. Only when it's been in one place for a couple of weeks is it time to throw a party. We've had spikes like that in the same manner. They can be difficult, if not impossible, to figure out. They usually always go back down.
      Very confusing to figure out. I'm going to give it a week and see if it changes at all.
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