Huge Spike in Direct Traffic from IE7
-
Our site is seeing a huge spike in direct (none) traffic from IE 7 from July 8, 2014 - on. June 25 - July 7 showed 21 direct visits from IE 7; July 8 - July 20 is showing 5,889 (an increase of 27,943%). All traffic from the spike is going to our homepage.
Other Google Analytics' stats for this direct (none) IE 7 traffic:
Bounce Rate: 99.52%
Avg. Session Duration: 0:02
Pages/session: 1.01
Mostly all new usersWhat's strange is that the traffic is from a variety of cities and networks. What could be causing this? Has anyone experienced this before?
-
We have removed all of our adroll code - and seeing it start up as well.
-
I'm seeing a few reports on that in the comments of the SER piece at http://www.seroundtable.com/direct-traffic-ie7-analytics-18897.html, too.
-
Looks like the traffic has returned ...
-
Seeing the same thing from July 8th onwards for both companies, and both use/have used Adroll.
-
Adding a fresh reply here so people get notified in their inboxes (editing a previous reply doesn't generate a new email).
This is a problem with AdRoll and Perfect Audience, and both are aware of the problem (and invite you to contact them with any issues regarding your account). An update post is at http://www.seroundtable.com/adroll-invalid-traffic-18922.html
-
We saw the same significant drop yesterday, too. There have been some links to AdRoll and Perfect Audience mentioned in the comments sections of http://www.seroundtable.com/direct-traffic-ie7-analytics-18897.html. Both of those companies have made a response in the comments too.
-
Interestingly enough - today the # of these visits drastically decreased for some of our clients. Not totally gone, but significantly lower. Anyone else see something similar?
-
We're experiencing the same issue starting around the same time and ongoing. Seems to have happened in the past from what I've read but no one seems to have answers.
-
Keri - thank you so much for the update - I hope that Barry can all get an answer quickly!
-
Lots of people are seeing this at the moment. Still no reason has been identified, but you're not alone. Barry has a few more details on SER at http://www.seroundtable.com/direct-traffic-ie7-analytics-18897.html.
-
We have a client who is also experiencing the same thing - it looks like that this is happening to a lot of people now and in the past checkout:
and
https://code.google.com/p/analytics-issues/issues/detail?id=138
I can't seem to find a solution. The closest thing is setting up a filter like here: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2013/09/05/filter-bots-google-analytics/#sr=g&m=o&cp=or&ct=-tmc&st=(opu qspwjefe)&ts=1406181439 however, the service providers in GA are all generic.
Does anyone else have a solution?
-
I'm seeing the same direct traffic spike in IE 7.0. 1500 visitors/day. No clue why.
-
Thank so much! I think I will try CloudFlare out.
-
ADROLL is the one to blame: http://www.seroundtable.com/adroll-invalid-traffic-18922.html
If it isn't messing with your server services and just spiking in Analytics, I would just let it there and enjoy the (probably fake) traffic.
As there's actually no referrer and nothing tiding that traffic to a source, there's not much you can do aside of blocking some IPs.
You can also test-drive CloudFlare (very easy to setup, and free) which filter fake traffic (among other benefits) using known IP addresses and browser integrity checks prior to send the hit to your server.
-
Thanks for your response.
There isn't a specific location and/or network that stands out, which is really strange.
AT&T is up 14,050%, Time Warner is up 2,300%, Comcast is up 18,600% (all for direct IE 7 traffic).
California, Texas, Florida are all showing large jumps for IE 7 direct traffic, with CA being the largest. That's not surprising since we're a CA college system, but we're also not seeing a specific city responsible for the spike. It's spread out across LA, Fresno, Bakersfield, etc.
-
What location is it coming from? Sometimes you'll get a ton of traffic all from the same spot, and it winds up being some kind of bot or spam that's getting picked up. I'd check the network too.
-Adam
-
Thanks for the response.
I checked with my team, and to their recollection, nobody ordered a campaign that would have caused this. Our webmaster is reporting no server damage, either.
-
Have you signed up for any traffic exchange, affiliate program or similar? Purchased a service on fiverr or similar?
If those hits are not causing any damage to your server, then just ignore it... If it is causing damage, you might be a victim of a DDoS attack...
First, make sure you haven't ordered a service that results in that traffic, we'll go from there.
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
-
Organic traffic down
My 15 or so clients have all seen a drop in organic traffic by about 20% on GA4 for April. Rankings have not dropped or anything like that - so just wondering if anyone else has had similar?
Reporting & Analytics | | Contentcoms1 -
Why is Indeed.com traffic appearing as organic in Google Analytics?
A large number of sessions in my client's Google Analytics account appear to come from medium: organic and source:Indeed. Since I'm focused on SEO for this project, I'd prefer that Indeed be treated as referral traffic. Any ideas for fixing this issue? Also, and I'm sure the answer is no, is there a way to fix the past data in Google Analytics that has already reported Indeed as an organic medium?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin_P0 -
Dark Traffic Mystery!
Hey everyone, My team and I have been digging into this problem and can't find an answer - and it turns out this has been an issue for over year. I'll try to explain the best I can, but let me know if you have any questions. My predecessor noticed a non-existent page URL getting traffic in GA. He had the web dev team create a page so he could see where the traffic is coming from. The page has every directive under the sun on it; noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir, noimageindex, notranslate All of the traffic is (direct) / (none). It gets about 300 visits per day. Avg. time on page is 15:40, bounce rate is 99.6% and it doesn't show up in the funnel. Previous page path is 92% entrance; 8% homepage. Geo is 92% US; then diversified across countries. Browser is predominately Chrome. OS is only Windows, and device is only desktop. I've run this page through a backlink checker, and we get nothing. I've run it through Screaming Frog and it has no internal links pointing to it. I've tried putting quotes around the URL and googling it and we get a few websites, but they're very low authority and it isn't likely that they're sending 300+ visits per day. Also, since all of the traffic is direct, I don't think it's coming from a backlink anyway. This has become a personal quest for several of us, as we really want to figure out where that traffic is coming from. Any thoughts? What am I missing? It's kind of driving me crazy because I can't figure out what I've missed, so if anyone figures this out and is coming to Pubcon in November, I'll buy you a beer!! 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | rachelmeyer0 -
How do you analyze a traffic drop with no historic Google Analytics data?
A client of mine has a large website with multiple sections (shop, forums, articles, etc.) that apparently had a significant reduction in rankings, traffic, and sales in the past. However, historic Google Analytics data is not available for the site, and I'm having troubles identifying anything concrete about the traffic drop, such as when it happened, what pages/sections it happened to, etc. The shop traffic drives most of the revenue, but it's a small number compared to the forums traffic, so it's hard to pick anything out of top-line trends like SEMrush offers. What tools or strategies might help in this situation?
Reporting & Analytics | | AdamThompson0 -
Gets traffic on both domain.dk and domain.dk/default.asp
Hi. Im runnning a couple of sites. And in my analytics/webmastertool I get both traffic on domain.dk and domain.dk/default.asp which are both essentially the same page. I'm pretty sure it would be better, if I somehow could make the default.asp "redirect" to "/". I dont wanna loose the linkjuice thou. Any smart suggestions for an easy fix? /Kasper
Reporting & Analytics | | KasperGJ0 -
Hour of the day that my analytics goals are being triggered within the all traffic report.
I am trying to identify the hour of the day that particular keywords (organic and PPC) are triggering my goals. Ideally I'd like to be able to use the all traffic report with the secondary dimension set as keyword. Hopefully I'm missing something simple, thanks all. Mark
Reporting & Analytics | | mde9110 -
Excluding referral traffic from a specific page Google analytics
Hi, I am trying to exclude from referrals from a particular page i.e. www.domain.com/nothispage within Google analytics, I have tried a couple variations within the advanced filter (Regex etc) section without much luck, could anyone assist ? Updated-trying to do this using a filter for the entire profile. Thanks Marc
Reporting & Analytics | | NRMA0 -
Traffic Drop with no real explaination?
Hello Everyone, On one of my sites PokerOnaMac we experienced a 75% drop in traffic in about a week (since September 3rd). I took a look at GA and the penalties have been applied sitewide. I also checked my Google Webmaster Tools, and there are no messages regarding "unhealthy link structures." We have had other sites penalized by Penguin & Manual Removals, but they are recovering now. What is my best bet to find what is wrong? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | BestOdds0