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Client upset about huge spike in traffic, thinks its a bot

by misfitweb
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi all,

I am new to the Warrior Forum, and hope this is the correct section to post (I read the rules on the main discussion forum, and it seemed like a bad idea to post there).

I have a client that has had a huge spike in traffic according to GA the last 4 days. I looked through everything, the user stays on the site for about 1 minute, different IP's, different browsers, different operating systems, etc., and almost 100% bounce rate. There's no way for me to singularly filter out or block the traffic, and the client wants a fix for this problem and I have no clue what to do at this point.

I did check browser versions and was able to filter out some old FF or Chrome versions, but most of the traffic from IE8 and IE9 users, and I don't want to filter out those browsers because they are still somewhat used and I don't want to filter out legit traffic.

Has anyone experienced something like this before? I can't think of anything that could be done at all, but I don't think the client will accept that answer. Would appreciate any input.
#analytics #bot #bots #bounce rate #client #huge #seo #spike #thinks #traffic #upset
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Is it search traffic coming from Google SERPs or direct traffic?

    Is all the traffic landing on a single webpage/URL?
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  • Profile picture of the author misfitweb
    It's all direct traffic on the home page, no referrals or searches.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by misfitweb View Post

      It's all direct traffic on the home page, no referrals or searches.
      I wouldn't worry about it, it's not like traffic is bouncing back to Google SERPs after landing on your webpage.
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      • Profile picture of the author misfitweb
        Well, the SEO guy and myself have both told the client this, but like I said they believe that this is going to cause them problems and we're seeing if someone else has had this problem before.

        My main goal is to see if anyone has experienced the same issue and if there was anything they did to try to figure it out, or if it's something we're just going to have to deal with. Even though it is direct traffic, they are still convinced it will mess with their SERP.
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  • Profile picture of the author jessikaload
    Try to filter service provider
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  • Profile picture of the author misfitweb
    I did, they are all "(not set)". What a pain lol
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    What if it was a social media share and the website is finally getting some recognition, he wants to stop that ? Were they all to the same page ?

    I remember getting 70k visitors to a page over a couple of hours once, that led to a few 1000 likes on facebook retweets and other such things.... he wants to stop this ?

    Most bots will not stick around a full minute. No reason for a DDOS attack to last longer than about 4 seconds, scrapers would be about the same...my guess would be actual users.

    Similarly a month ago I hit top keyword for something that was in the news, and that led to a few thousand people over about 12 hours.

    Spikes are what it's all about.

    I would call your web host and see if they think it was an attack or not. Check the server load at that time also make sure some malware wasn't firing from your server. Make sure your blocking sensitive areas using your robots.txt if your running Wordpress or similar such as all directories following any /wp-****
    Signature

    If you don't look at this => Really Funny Shirts <= you missed something in life

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  • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
    It doesn't sound like a problem to me.

    It sounds more like the type of traffic you get when your site is shared on StumbleUpon.

    Instead of actually hurting the client by blocking traffic to his site because of his mistaken belief that this traffic is bad, you should educate him that there is nothing wrong and nothing to be worried about.
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  • Profile picture of the author news2cash
    A gust of wind? Is it at your back or against you. Use it for lift or speed.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    If you're suspecting an attack of some sort, PBScott's idea of contacting your host is a good one.

    Other than that this might be a case of educating your client. What kind of trouble they think they'll have? Bounce rate does not directly affect SEO, and if you know there's some weird bot activity going on you can take that in account in your analysis too.
    Signature
    Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
    Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

    What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author EugeneWalton
    What about his results though?

    Isn't he getting more appointments, opt-ins, downloads, checkouts (What ever his objective was) through your traffic?
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  • Profile picture of the author misfitweb
    I did speak with the host not long before I made this post and they don't see anything.

    I do not know yet if the client is receiving more calls or not (yet), but they don't believe them to be legit visits because they are only one the site for a minute consistently. I will find out if they are getting additional business though.
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