undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Spike then Drop in Direct Traffic?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Spike then Drop in Direct Traffic?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
5
10
2.3k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • HB17
    HB17 last edited by May 14, 2015, 4:49 AM

    We've been doing some SEO work over the last few weeks and earlier this week we saw a large spike in traffic. Yay we all thought, but then yesterday the traffic levels returned to pre-celebratory levels.

    I've been doing some digging to try and find out what was different Monday and Tuesday this week. Mondays are usually big traffic days for us anyway, but this week was by far the biggest, and Tuesday was even higher still, our best day ever.

    After some poking, I found that the direct traffic followed the same pattern as our overall traffic levels (image attached). The first spike coincides with an email we sent out that day, but the later spike we just don't know where it came from?

    I understand loosely that direct isn't easily traceable, but can anyone help us understand more about this second spike?

    Thanks!

    ayqL2wi

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Carloseo
      Carloseo last edited by May 24, 2015, 9:48 PM May 24, 2015, 9:47 PM

      You might want to check if you have spam in your reports, especially this referral free-social-buttons. This referral spam hits with direct visit along with the referral part.

      The problem of this spam over others is that even if you filter the referral you will keep getting the fake direct visits, but luckily there is a solution, if you check the hostname that these direct visits use you will see that is not set or it's fake as any Ghost Spam in Google Analytic, so they way to stop this type of spam in any form(referral, keyword or direct) is to create a valid hostname filter that will only allow valid traffic. You can check full details of this issue in this article:

      http://www.ohow.co/unusual-increase-in-direct-traffic-on-ga-spam/

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • HB17
        HB17 @KyleEaves last edited by May 18, 2015, 11:42 AM May 18, 2015, 11:42 AM

        Hi Kyle,

        Thanks for responding.

        We found it was from Miami after some digging around in Analytics and sorting by location.

        No drop in traffic organically, just our usual organic combined with direct gives us a huge spike, but direct from Miami isn't much use for us!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • KyleEaves
          Kyle Eaves @HB17 last edited by May 16, 2015, 2:27 PM May 16, 2015, 2:27 PM

          I seem to have the same issue on my site. I get a sudden influx of visitors within minutes all coming from direct traffic. How did you discover the traffic was from Miami? The only identifying factor I could find in GA was that the Network Domain for the traffic was 1e100.net. Not sure how sending direct traffic would benefit a spammer.

          Have you experienced an overall drop in traffic on days you get the huge spike in direct traffic? I feel like I do, maybe the high bounce rate is a problem and signal to Google?

          Would be nice to block the traffic but possibly just filter it from GA to avoid skewed data if it is not affecting your site.

          Kyle Eaves
          SEO Specialist
          KyleEaves.com

          HB17 1 Reply Last reply May 18, 2015, 11:42 AM Reply Quote 1
          • HB17
            HB17 last edited by May 14, 2015, 5:05 PM May 14, 2015, 5:05 PM

            Ok, so I've been doing some digging and I've found the cause, just not the answer.

            The additional traffic came in at 9am from Miami... Our website has nothing to do with Miami and 9am would be 3am local time.

            It still doesn't look like anything spammy but still, where can I go from here to find the cause of Miami traffic coming to our site?

            Thanks!

            KyleEaves 1 Reply Last reply May 16, 2015, 2:27 PM Reply Quote 0
            • ATP
              ATP last edited by May 14, 2015, 7:54 AM May 14, 2015, 7:54 AM

              With it being over a week since your email was sent I don't think the two events are related, the pattern we see from our emails see an initial spike and a much smaller spike the Monday of the following week due to out of offices etc.

              If your certain its direct traffic then I would be investigating further with analytics. The spike is at a time you normally experience spikes, is this coincidence or a pattern?

              In our marketing department we try to paint a picture of our direct traffic users.

              Which page are they landing on, what are they doing, where is the user located, are the visits resulting in more bookings/services being orders. Then consider external factors which may cause people to go looking more.

              For example, one company I work with here in the UK see a jump in direct traffic correlating with the end of the financial year and tax refunds.

              As SMG said, Behaviour and Acquisition tabs are your friend. Sorry its not more of an "answer" but direct traffic can be vague.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • HB17
                HB17 @ATP last edited by May 14, 2015, 7:13 AM May 14, 2015, 7:13 AM

                Thank you for your reply.

                Apologies, here's some more info:

                Our increase in traffic overall was much higher than normal, but in Analytics when we view just direct, this seems to be the cause of the additional traffic. Organic did not spike.

                It is a website for a car dealership containing many brands. The website is fairly large, around 1,000 pages with another 1,000 used cars which are fed in every morning with updates (cars sold, new cars added etc).

                Mondays are normally busy days as customers like to book test drives/services etc ready for the following weekend.

                Thank you.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • ATP
                  ATP @HB17 last edited by May 14, 2015, 7:05 AM May 14, 2015, 7:05 AM

                  Harry, Could you provide a little more info/clarify a few things?

                  You stated that your direct traffic on the spike day followed the same overall pattern as a normal day etc... but you haven't clarified if the spike was all direct traffic.

                  Was this spike definitely direct traffic?

                  Also I think its beneficial for us to know (so we can look at factors that might influence direct traffic)
                  What Industry / Type of website is it?
                  Why  are Mondays normally big traffic days?

                  HB17 1 Reply Last reply May 14, 2015, 7:13 AM Reply Quote 1
                  • HB17
                    HB17 @DSM_UK last edited by May 14, 2015, 6:37 AM May 14, 2015, 6:37 AM

                    Thanks for your reply Jimmy.

                    We didn't send any emails out on our second spike, which is why we're confused.

                    The landing pages don't look any different from what we'd expect day-to-day - Nothing that really stands out.

                    Thanks

                    ATP 1 Reply Last reply May 14, 2015, 7:05 AM Reply Quote 0
                    • DSM_UK
                      DSM_UK last edited by May 14, 2015, 6:23 AM May 14, 2015, 6:23 AM

                      Hi there,

                      To get a better idea of your traffic you really need to dig into the Acquisition and Behaviour tabs in Google Analytics.
                      If you are saying it was a mystery spike in direct traffic, have you checked what the landing pages are? Google translates and the web archive can appear in direct traffic, but are distinguishable from their landing pages.

                      Did you check that traffic from your email was being reported correctly? Sometimes email can be seen as direct traffic if the email doesn't report the referral, so it is worth checking.

                      Hopefully this gives you a starting point for further investigation!

                      King Regards

                      Jimmy

                      HB17 1 Reply Last reply May 14, 2015, 6:37 AM Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      1 out of 10
                      • First post
                        1/10
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      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.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • Kingalan1

                        Organic Traffic Drop of 90% After Domain Migration

                        We moved our domain is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com on April 4th. It was migrated to https://www.metro-manhattan.com Google Search Console continues to show  about 420of URLs indexed for the old "NYC" domain. This number has not dropped on Search Console. Don't understand why Google has not de-indexed the old site. 
                        For the new "Metro" domain only 114 pages are being shown as valid. Our search volume has dropped from about 85 visits a day to 12 per day. 390 URLs appear as "crawled- currently not indexed". Please note that the migrated content is identical. Nothing at all changed. All re-directs were implemented properly. Also, at the time of the migration we filed a disavow for about 200 spammy links. This disavow file was entered for the old domain and the new one as well. Any ideas as to how to trouble shoot this would be much appreciated!!! This has not been very good for business.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 20, 2018, 6:53 PM | Kingalan1
                        0
                      • placementLabs

                        How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?

                        Hey Moz, I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced. I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction. I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website. Nicer than most design/content. They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here. The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April. Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough. Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds. There is no way that the traffic is real. It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me. How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 6, 2016, 9:43 PM | placementLabs
                        0
                      • RWW

                        Positions dropping in SERPs after Title and Snippet change

                        Hi! I switched to a better title and meta description today for our page. Instead of ranking us better and displaying the new title - google let us fall from Position 10 to Position 16 (still dip laying the old title and meta description). Why is that? (I only changed it for the homepage) Cheers Marc

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 23, 2015, 5:12 PM | RWW
                        0
                      • lcourse

                        Is it a problem to use a 301 redirect to a 404 error page, instead of serving directly a 404 page?

                        We are building URLs dynamically with apache rewrite.
                        When we detect that an URL is matching some valid patterns, we serve a script which then may detect that the combination of parameters in the URL does not exist. If this happens we produce a 301 redirect to another URL which serves a 404 error page, So my doubt is the following: Do I have to worry about not serving directly an 404, but redirecting (301) to a 404 page? Will this lead to the erroneous original URL staying longer in the google index than if I would serve directly a 404? Some context. It is a site with about 200.000 web pages and we have currently 90.000 404 errors reported in webmaster tools (even though only 600 detected last month).

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 13, 2014, 11:11 AM | lcourse
                        0
                      • damienthivolle

                        Subdomains vs directories on existing website with good search traffic

                        Hello everyone, I operate a website called Icy Veins (www.icy-veins.com), which gives gaming advice for World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, two titles from Blizzard Entertainment. Up until recently, we had articles for both games on the main subdomain (www.icy-veins.com), without a directory structure. The articles for World of Warcraft ended in -wow and those for Hearthstone ended in -hearthstone and that was it. We are planning to cover more games from Blizzard entertainment soon, so we hired a SEO consultant to figure out whether we should use directories (www.icy-veins.com/wow/, www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/, etc.) or subdomains (www.icy-veins.com, wow.icy-veins.com, hearthstone.icy-veins.com). For a number of reason, the consultant was adamant that subdomains was the way to go. So, I implemented subdomains and I have 301-redirects from all the old URLs to the new ones, and after 2 weeks, the amount of search traffic we get has been slowly decreasing, as the new URLs were getting index. Now, we are getting about 20%-25% less search traffic. For example, the week before the subdomains went live we received 900,000 visits from search engines (11-17 May). This week, we only received 700,000 visits. All our new URLs are indexed, but they rank slightly lower than the old URLs used to, so I was wondering if this was something that was to be expected and that will improve in time or if I should just go for subdomains. Thank you in advance.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 4, 2014, 9:32 AM | damienthivolle
                        0
                      • AdamThompson

                        Organic search traffic dropped 40% - what am I missing?

                        Have a client (ecommerce site with 1,000+ pages) who recently switched to OpenCart from another cart. Their organic search traffic (from Google, Yahoo, and Bing) dropped roughly 40%. Unfortunately, we weren't involved with the site before, so we can only rely on the wayback machine to compare previous to present. I've checked all the common causes of traffic drops and so far I mostly know what's probably not causing the issue. Any suggestions? Some URLs are the same and the rest 301 redirect (note that many of the pages were 404 until a couple weeks after the switch when the client implemented more 301 redirects) They've got an XML sitemap and are well-indexed. The traffic drops hit pretty much across the site, they are not specific to a few pages. The traffic drops are not specific to any one country or language. Traffic drops hit mobile, tablet, and desktop I've done a full site crawl, only 1 404 page and no other significant issues. Site crawl didn't find any pages blocked by nofollow, no index, robots.txt Canonical URLs are good Site has about 20K pages indexed They have some bad backlinks, but I don't think it's backlink-related because Google, Yahoo, and Bing have all dropped. I'm comparing on-page optimization for select pages before and after, and not finding a lot of differences. It does appear that they implemented Schema.org when they launched the new site. Page load speed is good I feel there must be a pretty basic issue here for Google, Yahoo, and Bing to all drop off, but so far I haven't found it. What am I missing?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 14, 2014, 6:02 AM | AdamThompson
                        0
                      • TextStylesUK

                        Page position dropped on Google

                        Hey Guys, My web designer has recommended this forum to use, the reason being: my google position has been dropped from page 1 to page 10 in the last week. The site is weloveschoolsigns.co.uk, but our main business site is textstyles.co.uk the school signs are a product of text styles. I have been told off my SEO company, that because I have changed the school logo to the text styles logo, Google have penalised me for it, and dropped us from page 1 for numerous keywords, to page 10 or more. They have also said that duplicate content within the school site  http://www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk/school-signs-made-easy/ has also a contributed to the drop in positions. (this content is not on the textstyles site) Lastly they said, that having the same telephone number is a definate no no. They said that I have been penalised, because google see the above as trying to monopolise on the market. I don’t know if all this is true, as the SEO is way above my head, but they have quoted me £1250 to repair all the errors, when the site only cost £750. They have also mentioned that because of the above changes, the main text styles site will also be punished. Any thoughts on this matter would be much appreciated as I don't know whether to pay them to crack on, or accept the new positions. Either way I'm very confused. Thanks Thomas

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 17, 2013, 9:57 AM | TextStylesUK
                        0
                      • lcourse

                        Should I noindex the site search page? It is generating 4% of my organic traffic.

                        I read about some recommendations to noindex the URL of the site search.
                        Checked in analytics that site search URL generated about 4% of my total organic search traffic (<2% of sales). My reasoning is that site search may generate duplicated content issues and may prevent the more relevant product or category pages from showing up instead. Would you noindex this page or not? Any thoughts?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 11, 2013, 2:06 PM | lcourse
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.