Direct Traffic Spike
-
In February, I transferred an HTML site to a WordPress Platform. Since then, Direct traffic has spiked to nearly 400% since the WordPress transition. The Direct traffic spike took roughly 2 months before it started to kick in. Does anyone know what this could be attributed to?
-
The re-directs may have been the issue...will report back when I can see a trend. Thanks for the help!
-
Hi Steve
Direct traffic which 404's should not trigger any sort of hit. They could be coming from a variety of places: old links, bookmarks, browser history, emails, social shares etc. Your best bet if you want to retain any traffic value there is to 301 them to relevant pages if possible.
-Dan
-
That may have helped. We changed some of the page names to more relevant and descriptive pagenames. Alot of our landing pages are 404 when I look at the Direct Traffic now. Would that trigger a Direct Traffic hit somehow? Those should still be referrals from old links...right? Even then, the 404 direct hits don't make up for the difference. Direct traffic for the homepage is up significantly too.
-
In addition to some of the other suggestions, I would suggest segmenting your traffic even more. Is there any other common denominator? Mobile vs Desktop? Certain landing pages? Location? etc...
Also, it's not a typical looking glitch, which shoots straight up and stays there, the direct traffic takes some dips etc - what's happening there? Can you segment anything about the direct traffic during those dips etc?
-Dan
-
Is this consistent with scrapers and feed grabbers? I launched the site in mid february. The direct traffic didn't really kick in until a month or two after. The previous site was a straight .HTML site that I built. The new one is a WordPress site.
http://www.screencast.com/t/ETME6FbDhvz
I would like to think that the traffic is good. But if it is effecting the security or organic traffic in any way, I need to fix it. My organic traffic started to sink after the WordPress switch as well.
http://www.screencast.com/t/dJ0Oeyma5Xs
Any thoughts are appreciated.
-
Egol,
In my experience, scrapers and feedgrabbers are usually server-side scripts that won't register in Google Analytics because they won't have Javascript enabled.
Of course - the server logs will definitely show scrapers.
-
EGOL has a good point about the scrapers.
One thing I would like to mention about Wordpress is to pay attention to your spikes. Below is a link to my personal sites stats.
http://screencast.com/t/eJ6pFjg2BkFj
Now, I am going to show you the daily for july.
http://screencast.com/t/neiHXyj6ck
Now, here is the break down where you can see the most requested page.
http://screencast.com/t/pMT1tKpJOpO
Look how the numbers are skewed. I only change content on this site like 2 times a month. But the second most requested page is the admin page. I have noticed here lately that there are some new bots running and they are nailing the admin pages of WP.
With WP being the most used platform on the internet, it is like Windows when it comes to people looking for exploits to it. I would suggest using a Wordpress security plugin. I cannot really recommend any, I haven't used one myself. What I tend to do is just disable the login by renaming the file with an extension of .php_ then it will 404 all requests. This can be a viable option if you manage the sites totally and do not have clients that want to login to them, like in my case. If not I would look for a WP security plugin recommendation.
-
Scrapers and feedgrabbers.
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
-
How do I track specific referral traffics journey through a website?
Hello, A client has asked us to track the journey each separate referral traffic visitor takes through out the website. I have had a look through analytics and am not sure how to ensure I can do this for all referral traffic visitors? Can anyone help? Thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | mblsolutions0 -
Organic and direct traffic swap
We moved to a CMS (Webhook) and when we did that organic traffic and direct traffic swapped places. Since we moved it organic traffic is down by about 400 visits and direct traffic is up by 400 visits. I went through the list below and confirmed everything is working. The http refer wasn't being passed for a couple of weeks but the issue was resolved and the organic traffic issue is still ongoing. Is there anything else that may cause this issue? I confirmed the issue isn't one of the below problems. during http to https redirect (or vice versa) the referrer may not be passed incorrect subdomain or cross-domain tracking can strip the referrer. 302 redirects sometimes caused the referrer to be dropped problems with cookies being lost/corrupted. javascript missing from certain entry pages (means any further page view looks like a direct)
Reporting & Analytics | | BT20090 -
Traffic drops considerable at midnight
Hi can any one tell me why traffic drops at the same time each day, at around midnight until 8.30 am website traffic drops off. We target the UK and the USA, we have geo target set for the UK in webmaster. Thanks for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | Taiger0 -
Universal Analytics: Why does Google Organic appear as Direct traffic?
Hi there, When I enter the site via Google Search and follow myself via Real-Time Analytics I appear an organic visitor (which is good). When I browse and visit the site I still am an organic visitor. However, as soon as I fill in the contact form (gravity forms) and land on the "thank you page" I appear as a direct visitor with Google as the source. Since I have the thank you page set-up as a goal, Analytics incorrectly attributes these conversions to the direct medium instead of the organic medium. The tracking code has been installed on all the pages and all conversions are being recorded. What is going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | Robbern0 -
Segment G-news one box traffic
Hey Guys, This might be an over spoken topic but I havent been able to find a proper answer or solution for this issue. So far, the closest solution I came across is this article --> http://moz.com/blog/decoding-googles-referral-string-or-how-i-survived-secure-search I would like to know if there is any other solution for this matter. I have been searching the web for quite while now and I havent found a reasonable solution to segmenting the traffic from google news one box.News onebox traffic is counted as organic/google in GA.Is there a way to measure the traffic coming from the onebox news??Please note that news.google.com is not the same thing.I really appreciate any help.
Reporting & Analytics | | Mr.bfz0 -
Direct traffic decline
I've noticed a few of our sites (tour, hotel, and local attraction) which are very established and reasonably high brand recognition that have experienced a significant decrease in branded traffic (-20-30% compared to same period from the previous year) the past few months. There have been no changes in offline marketing though we are seeing a slight decrease in visitor arrivals (-5%) and higher hotel room rates. Is there a chance that Google's not set may be affecting direct traffic numbers? Any other thoughts on how we can figure out why brand traffic is dipping? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | SoulSurfer80 -
Help! Organic traffic decreased 75%.
Hi all, I've had fairly steady organic traffic to my website (www.toptienmobiel.nl) for the last 2 years. Since the beginning of march however I've noticed that the organic traffic was decreasing. Up until now my total organic traffic has decreased to about a quarter of what it was. It doesn't seem to be a penalty, since I still have most of my important keywords on the first page. They've decreased significantly though, mostly from the top 3 to 7+ position. Any idea on what may have been the reason for this sudden decrease? My link profile is still natural and I haven't done anything radical to the website concerning the backlinks or on-page elements. Could it be an algorithmic (Panda / Penguin) update? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | samerhadionline0 -
Google Webmaster Dropped Traffic
Hi Guys, I've recently implemented a new site design with a new url architecture etc.. I set up Google Webmaster tools in early March and went live with the new site on 2nd April. Since the 6th April (4 days after going live) I've notice a drop in impressions from 15,000 - 28,000 per day to 3,500 - 5,500 per day. Now I'm kind of new to this, so after I cleaned up after my initial panic, I checked impressions vs. clicks. Impression are down 44% and clicks 31%. Not bad I thought but then again what if I dropped so far off the radar I never made an impression. 1. So first question: Are the number of impressions of a keyword independant of ranking. So if I rank #3,445,234th will I still see impressions listed but avg. position reflect #3,445,234? So while I was thinking of asking these questions I checked Google Analytics for which I have just over 3 years of metrics. Compared to the past; overall traffic and organic traffic are the same if not 10-20% better. 2. So second: Am I missing something? Its a resort website so easter just ended and you would expect the traffic to match and drop, but such a sudden and dramitic drop in Webmaster Tools impressions does not match Google Analytics. Infact Organic traffic climbed slightly. Can anyone offer any insight? Thanks, Adam
Reporting & Analytics | | NaescentAdam0