Why has our site had a huge spike in referral traffic?
-
Starting last week, our site had a HUGE spike in referral traffic from: search.dnsassist.verizon.net.
We have never had a visit from there until last week, and had 12K visits last week so something is happening. The traffic does look normal though, all visits were in the US from 700 cities and pages/visit, avg visit duration and bounce rate are close to site average.
There is a few other referral sites that showed up last week as well: wind.search-help.net, uslc.search-help.net, finder.cox.net. All of these sites are low, around 30 to 50 visits a day, but we had not any referrals until last week.
I did notice most of these sites state "Explore with Yahoo Search."
Just wondering if anyone has every seen this before and wondering what is happening. Thanks for reading.
<colgroup><col width="207"></colgroup>
| | -
This sounds like Verizon's "Search Assist" page, which is shown to Verizon users when they miss-type a URL or try to access a domain that doesn't exist. How this happened to spike is anyone's guess. Here are two likely possibilities...
1. The browser hijack mentioned by Mike Roberts above could be trying to send Verizon users to a domain that doesn't exist, but is similar to yours (e.g. yourdomain.com and yourdomain.info) so when their browser tries to access the domain Verizon redirects them to their "Search Assist" page with similar results, including yours.
2. A company similar to yours, or perhaps even your own, could have been featured on a television show (e.g. Good Morning America) with a large viewing audience that isn't super web-savvy. Instead of typing YourBrandDomain.com into the URL bar they might think of it as a search bar and type "Your Brand" instead, resulting in the redirect to Verizon's "Search Assist" page of search results, which lists your domain as one of the results.
-
I've noticed with my ISP (time warner cable), when I type a URL that doesn't exist, it will route me to it's own SERP that has a list of businesses that are quasi relevant to the URL i typed in. Could this be happening for you?
-
Are you doing any type of PPC? That can cause some issues with there content network ads.
-
Cursory inspections shows that:
search.dnsassist.verizon.net is Verizon Wireless.... http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/verizon-substituting-its-own-search-engine-overriding-its-own-users-search-engine-preferences/
wind.search-help.net is search being done over the Windstream Communications broadband.
uslc.search-help.net is caused by a browser hijack.
And, finder.cox.net appears to also possibly be a browser hijack.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
40% Drop in Traffic since redesign
Hi One of our sites has seen a 40% drop in traffic since a redesign We have a complete 301 redirect list and have replicated all successful content. https://www.englishriviera.co.uk Any opinions would be most helpful.
SERP Trends | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Houston Company Needs Help (Will Our SEO Work Be Destroyed While Site is Down?, Can Anything be Done?)
I'm a Moz member, mostly just lurk, and love the Moz community. I work at a non profit company that does benchmarking data and helps school districts improve process in education. Our building flooded and our site is currently offline, is there anything we can do to stop/lesson any SEO page rank drop between now and when we are back up? We have worked very hard to get these rankings. I know it is minor compared to all tragedy in Houston, but we have worked hard to get these SEO gains (YEAH MOZ!) and I'd hate to lose them because of Harvey. Any suggestions, assistance appreciated! Ralph
SERP Trends | | inhouseninja1 -
How do you check what links there are to a specific page on a site?
Hi Mozzers, I'm doing a bit of research and need your help! I'm trying to find out what specific sites link to a particular page on a website. What's the best tool to use as I checked it with Moz and it only brought back 5 links? Then I tried an free online tool and it said there were 35 links. I'm a bit confused now. What tool/s do you use to check links to a specific page?
SERP Trends | | Leo_Woodhead0 -
Is there anyway to find the Keyword from which a site getting the Traffic??
Hi , I am researching on a site and i am trying to find the main keyword from which this site is getting it's majority of traffic . I am also trying to find out all the posts published by that site .. Is there any way to get it ? Any tool available here in Moz ? Thanks
SERP Trends | | SinbadKonick0 -
Any recommendations for a better internal site search bar for magento enterpise
Looking for recommendations for an internal search bar for magento. I would like to be able to sort the products when searching. I would like to preferably sort by price when a product is searched. And am looking for a better search experience.
SERP Trends | | hfranz0 -
Using the same Google Analytics account for two sites
I have a friend who is concerned that his competition is trying something funny to show high traffic. The competition has two sites using the same GA tracking code. What impact would this have on his actual traffic. One site has high traffic 7500 daily the other site has 150 daily but gaining momentum
SERP Trends | | polarking0 -
Storing & Analyzing Site Search Phrases
We are adding a JQuery smart search to our site that provides product suggestions as our visitors type. I can create a simple script to store precisely what the visitors are searching for and how they type it. However... I am not sure how to best analyze the data for use. Simply storing the data does not tell me how many times a particular phrase was used. I believe a smart suggestion search tool will skew my results, as it will suggest what I list my product names as in my database rather than what they call it. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I found a great JQuery script for the suggestion search, but is there anything out there for storing and analyzing the user search input?
SERP Trends | | TheDude0 -
Site search in Google results
If you Google 'Rightmove', you'll see they have a site search bar in the Google search results - please see image link. Anybody have any idea how they have managed to achieve this? jRz8l
SERP Trends | | RiceMedia0